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WOMAN,  CHURCH  AND  STATE. 

by  Matilda  Joslyn  Gage. 

AUTHOR    OF      "WOMAN  AS  INVENTOR,"      "WHO    PLANNED 

THE  TENNESSEE  CAMPAIGN?"     "WOMAN'S  RIGHT8 

CATECHISM;"  EDITOR  OF  "THE  HISTORY 

OF  WOMAN  SUFFRAGE." 


WOMAN,  CHURCH  AND  STATE: 
A  HISTORICAL  ACCOUNT  OF 
THE  STATUS  OF  WOMAN  THROUGH 
THE  CHRISTIAN  AGES:  WITH  REM- 
INISCENCES OF  THE  MATRIAR- 
CHATE.  BY  MATILDA  JOSLYN  GAGE. 


THIRD  EDITION. 


New  York  : 

THE  TRUTH  SEEKER  COMPANY, 

62  Vesey  Street. 


Copyright  1893 
By  Matilda  Joslyn  Gage 


This  Book  is  f  ItSCttbCfc  to  the  Memory  of  my  Mother, 
who  was  at  once  mother,  sister,  friend: 

H)C5iCHtC&  to  all  Christian  women  and  men,  of  what- 
ever creed  or  name  who,  bound  by  Church  or 
State,  have  not  dared  to  Think  for  Themselves: 

HJ)&rCS8€5  to  all  Persons,  who,  breaking  away  from 
custom  and  the  usage  of  ages,  dare  seek  Truth  for 
the  sake  of  Truth.  To  all  such  it  will  be  wel- 
come; to   all  others,  aggressive  and  educational. 


PREFACE. 

This  work  explains  itself  and  is  given  to  the  world 
because  ic  is  needed.  Tired  of  the  obtuseness  of 
Church  and  State;  indignant  at  the  injustice  of  both 
towards  woman  ;  at  the  wrongs  inflicted  upon  one-half 
of  humanity  by  the  other  half  in  the  name  of  religion; 
finding  appeal  and  argument  alike  met  by  the  asser- 
tion that  God  designed  the  subjection  of  woman,  and 
yet  that  her  position  had  been  higher  under  Christian- 
ity than  ever  before:  Continually  hearing  these  state- 
ments, and  knowing  them  to  be  false,  I  refuted  them 
in  a  slight  r/sum/  of  the  subject  at  the  annual  conven- 
tion of  the  National  Woman  Suffrage  Association, 
Washington,  D.  C,  1878. 

A  wish  to  see  that  speech  in  print,  having  been 
expressed,  it  was  allowed  to  appear  in  The  National 
Citizen,  a  woman  suffrage  paper  1  then  edited,  and 
shortly  afterwards  in  "The  History  of  Woman  Suf- 
frage," of  which  I  was  also  an  editor.  The  kindly  re- 
ception given  both  in  the  United  States  and  Europe 
to  that  meager  chapter  of  forty  pages  confirmed  my 
purpose  of  a  fuller  presentation  of  the  subject  in  book 
form,  and  it  now  appears,  the  result  of  twenty  years 
investigation,  in  a  volume  of  over  five  hundred  and 
fifty  pages. 

Read  it;  examine  for  yourselves;  accept  or  reject 
from  the  proof  offered,  but  do  not  allow  the  Church  or 
the  State  to  govern  your  thought  or  dictate  your 
judgment. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I.— THE  MATRIARCHATE. 

Tendency  of  Christianity  from  the  first  to  restrict  woman's  liberty.  Woman 
had  great  freedom  under  the  old  civilizations.  The  Matriarchate;  its  traces 
among  many  nations;  it  preceded  the  Patriarchate  The  Iroquois  or  Six  Nations 
under  reminiscences  of  the  Matriarchate.  Government  of  the  United  States 
borrowed  from  the  Six  Nations.  To  the  Matriarchate  or  Mother-rule,  is  the  world 
indebted  for  its  first  conception  of ''inherent  rights,"  and  a  government  estab- 
lished on  this  basis.  Malabar  under  the  Matriarchate  when  discovered  by  the 
Portuguese.  The  most  ancient  Aryans  under  the  Matriarchate.  Ancient  Egypt 
a  reminiscence  of  the  Matriarchal  period.  Authority  of  the  wife  among  the  most 
polished  nations  of  antiquity.  As  Vestal  Virgin  in  Rome,  woman's  authority  great 
both  in  civil  and  religious  affairs.  Monogamy  the  rule  of  the  Matriarchate.  Poly- 
gamy, infanticide  and  prostitution  the  rule  of  the  Patriarchate 48. 

CHAPTER  II.— CELIBACY. 

Original  sin.  Woman  not  regarded  as  a  human  being  by  the  church.  Mar- 
riage looked  upon  as  vile.  Celibacy  of  the  clergy,  their  degrading  sensuality. 
A  double  Code  of  Morals.  Celibacy  confirmed  as  a  dogma  of  the  church. 
Many  notable  consequences  followed.  Wives  sold  as  slaves.  Women  driven  to 
suicide.  Influence  of  the  church  unfavorable  to  virtue.  Women  of  wealth 
drawn  into  monastic  life.  The  church  in  Mexico.  President  Diaz.  Protestant 
Orders 112. 

CHAPTER  III.— CANON  LAW. 

The  church  makes  the  legitimacy  of  marriage  depend  upon  its  control  of  the 
ceremony.  Change  from  ancient  civilization  to  renewed  barbarism  at  an  early 
age  of  the  Christian  era,  noted  by  historians,  but  its  cause  unperceived.  The 
clergy  a  distinct  body  from  the  laity;  their  rights  not  the  same.  A  holy  sex  and 
an  unholy  one.  Rapid  growth  of  Canon  law  in  England.  Alteration  in  the  laws 
through  the  separation  of  Ecclesiastical  courts  from  theCivil, recognized  byBlack- 
stone  as  among  the  remarkable  legal  events  of  Great  Britain.  learning  pro- 
hibited to  women.   The  oath  of  seven  persons  required  to  convict  a  priest    Hua- 

7 


8  CONTENTS 

bands  prohibited  by  Canon  law  from  leaving  more  than  one-third  of  their  prop- 
erty to  wives;  might  leave  them  less.  Daughters  could  be  disinherited;  sons 
could  not  be.  The  Reformation  effected  no  change.  Governments  catering  to 
Pope  Leo  XIII.,  at  time  of  his  Jubilee;  the  President  of  the  United  States  sends 
aR*f< 151. 

CHAPTER  IV.—  MARQUETTE. 

Feudalism;  its  degradation  of  woman.  Jus  prima  noctis.  Rights  of  the  Lords 
Spiritual.  Peasants  decide  not  to  marry.  Immorality  of  the  heads  of  the  Greek 
and  the  Protestant  churches  Breton  Ballad  of  the  Fourteenth  Century.  St. 
Margaret  of  Scotland.  Pall  Mall  Gazette's  disclosures.  Foreign  traffic  in  young 
English  girls.  West  End.  Eton.  Prostitution  chiefly  supported  by  "Heads  of 
Families."  Northwestern  Pineries.  Governmental  crime-makers.  Rapid  in- 
crease of  child  criminals.  The  White  Cross  society.  Baptism  of  nude  women  in 
the  early  Christian  Church.  216 

CHAPTER  V.— WITCHCRAFT. 

The  possession  of  a  pet  of  any  kind  dangerous  to  woman.  Black  cats  and 
witches.  The  fact  of  a  woman's  possessing  knowledge,  brought  her  under  sus- 
picion of  the  church.  The  three  most  distinguishing  features  of  witchcraft.  Op- 
position of  the  church  to  the  growth  of  human  will.  Persecution  for  witchcraft  a 
continuance  of  church  policy  for  obtaining  universal  dominion  over  mankind.  The 
Sabbat.  The  Black  Mass.  Women  physicians  and  surgeons  of  the  middle  ages; 
they  discover  anaesthetics.  Their  learning;  their  persecution  by  the  church.  The 
most  eminent  legal  minds  incapable  of  forming  correct  judgment.  Three  nota- 
ble points  in  regard  to  witchcraft.  Persecution  introduced  into  America  by  the 
"Pilgrim  Fathers."  First  Synod  in  America  convened  to  try  a  woman  for  heresy. 
Whipping  half  nude  women  for  their  religious  opinions.  Famine  caused  by  per- 
secution of  women 294. 

CHAPTER  VI.— WIVES. 

"Usus."  Disruption  of  the  Roman  Empire  unfavorable  to  the  personal  and 
proprietary  rights  of  woman.  Sale  of  daughters  practiced  in  England  seven 
hundred  years  after  the  introduction  of  Christianity.  The  Mundium.  The  prac- 
tice of  buying  wives  with  cattle  or  money  regulated  by  law.  Evil  fame  of  Chris- 
tendom. "The  Worthier  of  Blood."  Murder  of  a  husband  termed  petit  treason; 
punished  by  burning  alive.  Mrs.  Sainio  decapitated  in  Finland,  1892,  for  crime 
of  petit  treason.  Husbands  control  wives' religion.  The  "Lucy  Walker  Case;" 
Judge  Dodge  decides  a  husband  has  a  property  interest  in  a  wife.  Davenport's 
Rules  for  his  wife.  Assaulting  wives  protected  by  law.  The  Ducking  Stool;  its 
use  in  England;  brought  to  America  by  the  "Pilgrim  Fathers."  Salic  law.  Gavel- 
kind.    Women  not  permitted  thread  the  Bible.     "Masterless  women."    Woman 


CONTENTS  9 

not  admitted  as  a  surety  or  witness.  The  Code  Napoleon.  Morganatic  marriage 
Ibsen's  "Ghosts."  Strindberg's  "Giftas."  Ancient  Slavs.  Russia  under  Greek 
Christianity.  The  Domstroii  Marriage  forms.  Burying  wives  alive.  "Darkest 
England."  Advertising  wives.  An  English  clergyman  offers  £100  reward  for  the 
capture  and  return  of  his  wife.  Civil  marriage  opposed  by  the  church.  Action 
of  the  Chilian  Republic 397* 

CHAPTER  VII.— POLYGAMY. 

Polygamy  sustained  by  the  Christian  Church  and  the  Christian  State.  The  first 
Synod  of  the  Reformation  convened  to  sanction  polygamy.  Favoring  views  of 
Luther  and  the  other  "principal  reformers."  Favoring  action  of  the  American 
Board  of  Foreign  Missions.  Favoring  action  of  a  Missionary  Conference  in 
India.  Mormons  compared  to  the  Puritans.  Mormon  theocracy  similar  to  that 
of  other  Christian  sects 431 

CHAPTER   VIII.—  WOMAN  AND  WORK. 

God's  "curse"  upon  Adam.  Opposition  of  the  church  to  amelioration  of 
woman's  suffering  as  an  interference  with  her  "curse."  Man's  escape  from  his 
own  "curse."  The  sufferings  of  helpless  infants  and  children  because  of  woman's 
labor.  Innutrition  and  the  hard  labor  of  expectant  mothers  the  two  great  fac- 
tors in  physical  degeneration  and  infantile  mortality.  Woman's  work  in  Europe 
and  the  United  States.  Woman  degraded  under  Christian  civilization  to  labors 
unfit  for  slaves 465. 

CHAPTER  IX.— THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY. 

Sin  killed  by  sin.  Woman's  inferiority  taught  from  the  pulpit  to-day.  A  Pas- 
toral letter.  The  See  trial.  Modern  sermons  on  women.  Lenten  lectures  of  Rev. 
Morgan  A.  Dix.  The  Methodist  General  Conference  of  1880,  rejects  Miss  Oliver's 
petition  for  ordination  on  the  plea  that  woman  already  has  all  the  rights  that  are 
good  for  her.  Resolves  itself  into  a  political  convention.  The  General  Con- 
ference of  1888,  rejects  women  delegates.  The  Catholic  Plenary  Council  of  1884. 
Mazzini's  prophecy.  The  opposition  of  the  church  to  woman's  education  has 
killed  off  the  inhabitants  of  the  world  with  greater  rapidity  than  war,  famine  or 
pestilence.  The  present  forms  of  religion  and  governments  essentially  mascu- 
line  ; 524. 

CHAPTER  X.— PAST,  PRESENT,  FUTURE. 

The  most  important  struggle  in  the  history  of  the  church.  Not  self-sacrifice, 
but  self-development  woman's  first  duty  in  life.  The  protective  spirit;  its  injury 
to  woman.  Christanity  of  little  value  to  civilization.  Looking  backward  through 
history;  looking  forward 543. 


WOMAN,  CHURCH  AND  STATE. 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE    MATRIARCHATE. 

Woman  is  told  that  her  present  position  in  society 
is  entirely  due  to  Christianity;  that  it  is  superior  to 
that  of  her  sex  at  any  prior  age  of  the  world,  Church 
and  State  both  maintaining  that  she  has  ever  been  in- 
ferior and  dependent,  man  superior  and  ruler. 
These  assertions  are  made  the  basis  of  opposition  to 
her  demands  for  exact  equality  with  man  in  all  the 
relations  of  life,  although  they  are  not  true  either  of 
the  family,  the  church,  or  the  state.  Such  assertions 
are  due  to  non-acquaintance  with  the  existing  phase 
of  historical  knowledge,  whose  records  the  majority  of 
mankind  have  neither  time  nor  opportunity  of  investi- 
gating. 

Christianity  tended  somewhat  from  its  foundation  to 
restrict  the  liberty  woman  enjoyed  under  the  old  civil- 
izations. Knowing  that  the  position  of  every  human 
being  keeps  pace  with  the  religion  and  civilization  of 
his  country,  and  that  in  many  ancient  nations  woman 
possessed  a  much  greater  degree  of  respect  and  power 
than  she  has  at  the  present  age,  this  subject  will  be 
presented  from  a  historical  standpoint.  If  in  so  doing 
it  helps  to  show  man's  unwarranted  usurpation  over 
woman's  religious  and  civil  rights,  and  the  very  great 
difference    between    true    religion   and    theology,  this 

11 


12  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

book  will  not  have  been  written  in  vain,  as  it  will 
prove  that  the  most  grievous  wrong  ever  inflicted  upon 
woman  has  been  in  the  Christian  teaching  that  she 
was  not  created  equal  with  man,  and  the  consequent 
denial  of  her  rightful  place  in  Church  and  State. 

The  last  half  century  has  shown  great  advance  in 
historical  knowledge;  libraries  and  manuscripts  long 
inaccessible  have  been  opened  to  scholars,  and  the 
spirit  of  investigation  has  made  known  many  secrets 
of  the  past,  brought  many  hidden  things  to  light. 
Buried  cities  have  been  explored  and  forced  to  reveal 
their  secrets;  lost  modes  of  writing  have  been  de- 
ciphered, and  olden  myths  placed  upon  historic  foun- 
dations. India  is  opening  her  stores  of  ancient  liter- 
ature; Egypt,  so  wise  and  so  famous,  of  which  it  was 
anciently  said;  "  If  it  does  not  find  a  man  mad  it 
leaves  him  mad,"  has  revealed  her  secrets;  hieroglyph- 
inscribed  temples,  obelisks  and  tombs  have  been 
interpreted;  papyri  buried  4,000  and  more  years  in 
the  folds  of  bandage-enveloped  mummies  have  given 
their  secrets  to  the  world.  The  brick  libraries  of 
Assyria  have  been  unearthed,  and  the  lost  civilization 
of  Babylonia  and  Chaldea  imparted  to  mankind.  The 
strange  Zunis  have  found  an  interpreter ;  the  ancient 
Astec  language  its  Champollion,  and  the  mysteries  of 
even  our  western  continent  are  becoming  unveiled. 
Darkest  Africa  has  opened  to  the  light;  the  colossal 
images  of  Easter  Island  hint  at  their  origin;  while  the 
new  science  of  philology  unfolds  to  us  the  history  of 
peoples  so  completely  lost  that  no  other  monument  of 
their  past  remains.  We  are  now  informed  as  to  the 
condition  of  early  peoples,  their  laws,  customs,  habits, 
religion,  comprising  order  and  rank  in  the  state,  the 
rules  of  descent,  name,  property,  the  circumstances  of 


THE  MATRIARCH  ATE  1 3 

family  life,  the  position  of  mother,  father,  children, 
their  temples  and  priestly  orders;  all  these  have  been 
investigated  and  a  new  historic  basis  has  been  dis- 
covered. Never  has  research  been  so  thorough  or 
long-lost  knowledge  so  fully  given  to  the  world. 

These  records  prove  that  woman  had  acquired  great 
liberty  under  the  old  civilizations.  A  form  of  society 
existed  at  an  early  age  known  as  the  Matriarchate  or 
Mother-rule.  Under  the  Matriarchate,  except  as  son 
and  inferior,  man  was  not  recognized  in  either  of  these 
great  institutions,  family,  state  or  church.  A  father 
and  husband  as  such,  had  no  place  either  in  the  social, 
political  or  religious  scheme;  woman  was  ruler  in 
each.  The  primal  priest  on  earth,  she  was  also 
suprejne  as  goddess  in  heaven.  The  earliest  semblance 
of  the  family  is  traceable  to  the  relationship  of 
mother  and  child  alone.  Here  the  primal  idea  of  the 
family  had  birth.1  The  child  bore  its  mother's  name, 
tracing  its  descent  from  her ;  her  authority  over  it  was 
regarded  as  in  accord  with  nature;  the  father  having 
no  part  in  the  family  remained  a  wanderer.  Long 
years  elapsed  before  man,  as  husband  and  father,  was 
held  in  esteem.  The  son,  as  child  of  his  mother, 
ranked  the  father,  the  mother  taking  precedence  over 
both  the  father  and  the  son.8  Blood  relationship 
through  a  common  mother  preceded  that  of  descent 
through    the    father    in  the   development    of  society.8 

i.  The  first  state  of  primitive  man  must  have  been  the  mere  aggregation.  The 
right  of  the  mother  was  therefore  most  natural;  upon  the  relationship  of  mother 
and  child  the  remotest  conception  of  the  family  was  based.—  Wilkin,   p.  869. 

2.  Where  a  god  and  goddess  are  worshiped  together  they  are  not  husband 
and  wife,  but  mother  and  son.  Neither  does  the  god  take  pre-eminence,  but  the 
mother  or  goddess.  This  condition  dates  from  the  earliest  days  of  society, 
when  marriage  in  our  sense  of  the  word  was  unknown,  and  when  kinship  and 
inheritance  were  in  the  female  line.  The  Babylonian  Ishtur  of  the  Izdobar 
legend  is  a  deity  of  this  type.—  IV.  Robertson  Smith:  Kinship  in  Ancient  Arabia, 

3.  Dr.  Th.  Achelis.  — Article  on  Ethnology:  {The  Open  Court.) 


14  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

This  priority  of  the  mother  touched  not  alone  the 
family,  but  controlled  the  state  and  indicated  the 
form  of  religion.  Thus  we  see  that  during  the 
Matriarchate,  woman  ruled  \  she  was  first  in  the  family, 
the  state,  religion,  the  most  ancient  records  showing 
that  man's  subjection  to  woman  preceded  by  long  ages 
that  of  woman  to  man.  The  tribe  was  united  through 
the  mother;  social,  political  and  religious  life  were 
all  in  harmony  with  the  idea  of  woman  as  the  first  and 
highest  power.  The  earliest  phase  of  life  being 
dependent  upon  her,  she  was  recognized  as  the  primal 
factor  in  every  relation,*  man  holding  no  place  but 
that  of  dependant. 

Every  part  of  the  world  to-day  gives  evidence  of  the 
system ;  reminiscences  of  the  Matriarchate  everywhere 
abound.  Livingstone  found  African  tribes  swearing 
by  the  mother  and  tracing  descent  through  her.  Marco 
Polo  discovered  similar  customs  in  his  Asiatic  voyages, 
and  the  same  customs  are  extant  among  the  Indians 
of  our  own  continent.  Bachofen5  and  numerous  in- 
vestigators* agree  in  the  statement  that  in  the  earliest 
forms  of  society,  the  family,  government,  and  religion, 
were  all  under  woman's  control;  that  in  fact  society 
started  under  woman's  absolute    authority   and  power. 

The  second  step  in  family  life  took  place  when  the 
father,  dropping  his  own  name,  took  that  of  his  child. 
This  old  and  wide-spread  custom  is  still  extant  in 
many  portions  of  the  globe;  the  primitive  peoples  of 
Java,  Australia  and  Madagascar  are  among  those  still 

4.  In  a  country  where  she  is  the  head  of  the  family,  where  she  decides  the 
descent  and  inheritance  of  her  children,  both  in  regard  to  property  and  place  in 
society  in  such  a  community,  she  certainly  cannot  be  the  servant  of  her  husband, 
but  at  least  must  be  his  equal  if  not  in  many  respects  his  superior.— Wilkin, 

5.  Motherright. 

6.  Lubbuck.— Pre-Historic  Times  and  Origin  of  Civilization.     Wilkin. 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  1 5 

continuing  its  practice.7  By  this  step  the  father  allied 
himself  to  both  mother  and  childt  although  still  hold- 
ing an  inferior  position  to  both.  The  Matriarchal 
family  was  now  fully  established,  descent  still  running 
in  the  female  line.  Thus,  as  has  been  expressed,  we 
find  that  woman's  liberty  did  not  begin  to-day  nor 
under  modern  religions  or  forms  or  government,  but 
that  she  was  in  reality  the  founder  of  civilization,  and 
that  in  the  most  remote  times  woman  enjoyed  superi- 
ority of  rights  in  all  the  institutions  of  life.8  And 
yet  so  difficult  is  it  to  break  away  from  educated 
thought,  so  slight  a  hold  have  historical  facts  upon 
the  mind  when  contrary  to  pre-conceived  ideas,  that 
we  find  people  still  expressing  the  opinion  that  man's 
place  has  always  been  first  in  government.  Even 
under  those  forms  of  society  where  woman  was  undis- 
puted head  of  the  family,  its  very  existence  due  to  her, 
descent  entirely  in  the  female  line,  we  still  hear 
assertion  that  his  must  have  been  the  controlling 
political  power.  But  at  that  early  period  to  which  we 
trace  the  formation  of  the  family,  it  was  also  the 
political  unit.  And  when  peoples  became  aggregated 
into  communities,  when  tribal  relations  were  ulti- 
mately recognized,  woman  still  held  superior  position, 
and  was  the  controlling  power  in  government,  and 
never  was  justice  more  perfect,  never  civilization 
higher  than  under  the  Matriarchate.  Historians  agree 
as  to  the  high  civilization  even  to-day  of  those  nations 

7.  Among  many  people  the  father  at  birth  of  a  child,  especially  a  son,  loses 
his  name  and  takes  the  one  his  child  gets.  Tylor— Primitive  Culture.  Also  see 
Wilkin. 

8.  "Thus  we  see  that  woman's  liberty  did  not  begin  at  the  upper,  but  at  the 
lower  end  of  civilization.  Woman  in  those  remote  times,  was  endowed  with  and 
enjoyed  rights  that  are  denied  to  her  but  too  completely  in  the  higher  phase  of 
civilization  This  subject  has  a  very  important  aspect,  /.  e.  the  position  of 
woman  to  man,  the  place  she  holds  in  society,  her  condition  in  regard  to  her 
private  and  public  (political)  rights." 


l6  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

or  tribes  still  preserving  traces  of  Matriarchal  customs. 
Even  under  its  most  degenerate  form,  the  family,  gov- 
ernmental and  religious  rights  of  women  are  more 
fully  recognized  than  under  any  phase  of  Christian 
civilization.  In  all  the  oldest  religions,  equally  with 
the  Semitic  cults,  the  feminine  was  recognized  as  a 
component  and  superior  part  of  divinity,  goddesses 
holding  the  supreme  place.  Even  at  much  later  periods 
woman  shared  equally  with  man  in  the  highest  priestly 
offices,  and  was  deified  after  death.  In  Egypt,  Neith 
the  Victorious,  was  worshiped  as  mother  of  the  gods, 
and  in  the  yearly  festival  held  in  her  honor,  every 
family  took  part  for  the  time  holding  a  priestly  office. 
To  neglect  this  duty  was  deemed  an  omission  of  great 
irreverence.9  The  most  ancient  occultism  recognized 
the  creative  power  as  feminine  and  preceding  both 
gods  and  men. 

Under  the  Matriarchate,  monogamy  was  the  rule; 
neither  polyandry  or  promiscuity  existed.10 

For  long  years  after  the  decline  of  the  Matriarchate 
we  still  discover  that  among  many  of  the  most  refined 
nations,  woman  still  possessed  much  of  the  power 
that  belonged  exclusively  to  her  during  that  early 
period.  Ancient  Egypt,  recognized  as  the  wisest 
nation  since  the  direct  historic  period,  traced  descent 
even  to  the  throne  in  the  female  line.  To  this  remin- 
iscence of  the  Matriarchate  are  we  indebted  for  the 
story  of  Moses  and  his  preservation  by  an  Egyptian 
princess  in  direct  contravention  of  the  Pharaoh's 
orders,  as  told  by  the  Bible  and  Josephus.  She  not 
alone  preserved  the  child's  life  but  carried  him  to  the 

9.  "Among  the  monogamous  classic  nations  of  antiquity.the  maternal  deity  was 
worshiped  with  religious  ceremonies." 

10.  We  find  the  mother's  right  exclusively  together  with  a  well-estab  lished 
monogamy.— Bachofen 


THE  MATRIARCHATE  1 7 

king  as  her  son  given  to  her  by  the  bounty  of  the 
river  and  heir  to  his  throne.  As  showing  woman's 
power  in  that  kingdom,  the  story  is  worthy  of  being 
farther  traced.  Josephus  says  that  to  please  his 
daughter,  the  king  took  the  child  in  his  arms,  placing 
his  crown  on  the  baby  head,  but  the  chief  priest  at 
that  moment  entering  the  room,  in  a  spirit  of  prophecy 
cried  aloud,  "Oh  King;  this  is  the  child  of  whom  I  fore- 
told danger;  kill  him  and  save  the  nation, "at  the  same 
time  striving  to  take  the  babe  from  the  king.  But 
the  princess  caught  him  away,  thus  setting  both  kingly 
and  priestly  power  at  defiance,  taking  this  step  by 
virtue  of  her  greater  authority,  protecting  him  until 
he  reached  manhood  and  causing  him  to  be  educated  in 
all  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians,  in  a  college  under 
her  own  control.  Nor  in  the  supreme  hour  of  the 
nation's  peril,  when  the  king,  too  old  to  lead  his  armies 
to  battle,  demanded  Moses  as  heir  to  the  throne  in  his 
place,  would  she  give  him  up  until  she  had  exacted 
an  oath  from  her  father,  the  potent  Pharaoh,  that  he 
meant  the  youth  no  harm. 

The  famous  Iroquois  Indians,  or  Six  Nations,  which 
at  the  discovery  of  America  held  sway  from  the  great 
lakes  to  the  Tombigbee  river,  from  the  Hudson  to 
the  Ohio,  and  of  whom  it  has  been  said  that  another 
century  would  have  found  them  master  of  all  tribes  to 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico  on  the  south,  and  the  Mississippi 
on  the  west,  showed  alike  in  form  of  government, 
and  in  social  life,  reminiscences  of  the  Matriarchate. 
The  line  of  descent,  feminine,  was  especially  notable 
in  all  tribal  relations  such  as  the  election  of  Chiefs,  and 
the  Council  of  Matrons,  to  which  all  disputed  questions 
were  referred  for  final  adjudication.  No  sale  of  lands 
was  valid   without  consent  of   the   squaws  and  among 


1 8  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  State  Archives  at  Albany,  New  York,  treaties  are 
preserved  signed  by  the  "Sachems  and  Principal 
Women  of  the  Six  Nations."11  The  women  also  pos- 
sessed the  veto  power  on  questions  of  war.  Sir  William 
Johnston  mentions  an  instance  of  Mohawk  squaws 
forbidding  the  war-path  to  young  braves.  The  family 
relation  among  the  Iroquois  demonstrated  woman's 
superiority  in  power.  When  an  Indian  husband 
brought  the  products  of  the  chase  to  the  wigwam,  his 
control  over  it  ceased.  In  the  home,  the  wife  was 
absolute;  the  sale  of  the  skins  was  regulated  by  her, 
the  price  was  paid  to  her.  If  for  any  cause  the 
Iroquois  husband  and  wife  separated,  the  wife  took  with 
her  all  the  property  she  had  brought  into  the  wigwam; 
the  children  also  accompanied  the  mother,  whose  right 
to  them  was  recognized  as  supreme.  So  fully  to  this 
day  is  descent  reckoned  through  the  mother,  that  blue- 
eyed,  fair-haired  children  of  white  fathers  are  num- 
bered in  the  tribe  and  receive  both  from  state  and 
nation  their  portion  of  the  yearly  dole  paid  to  Indian 
tribes.  The  veriest  pagan  among  the  Iroquois,  the  re- 
nowned and  important  Keeper  of  the  Wampum,  and 
present  sole  interpreter  of  the  Belts  which  give  the  most 
ancient  and  secret  history  of  this  confederation,  is 
Ephraim  Webster,  descended  from  a  white  man,  who, 
a  hundred  or  more  years  since,  became  affiliated 
through  marriage  with  an  Indian  woman,  as  a  member 
of  the  principal  nation  of  the  Iroquois,  the  Onondagas. 
As  of  yore,  so  now,  the  greater  and  lesser  Council 
Houses  of  the  Iroquois  are  upon  the  "mountain"  of 
the  Onondaga  reservation  a  few  miles  from  the  city  of 
Syracuse,  New  York.  Not  alone  the  Iroquois  but 
most    Indians  of    North  America  trace  descent  in   the 

II.  Documentary  History  of  New  York. 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  19 

female  line;  among  some  tribes  woman  enjoys  almost 
the  whole  legislative  authority  and  in  others  a  prom- 
inent share.12  Lafitte  and  other  Jesuit  missionary 
writers  are  corroborated  in  this  statement  by  School- 
craft, Catlin,  Clark,  Hubert  Bancroft  of  the  Pacific 
coast,  and  many  students  of  Indian  life  and  customs. 
But  the  most  notable  fact  connected  with  woman's 
participation  in  governmental  affairs  among  the  Iroquois 
is  the  statement  of  Hon.  George  Bancroft  that  the 
form  of  government  of  the  United  States,  was  borrowed 
from  that  of  the  Six  Nations.13  Thus  to  the  Mat- 
riarchate  or  Mother-rule  is  the  modern  world  indebt- 
ed for  its  first  conception  of  inherent  rights,  natural 
equality  of  condition,  and  the  establishment  of  a  civil- 
ized government  upon  this  basis.  Although  the  repu- 
tation of  the  Iroquois  as  warriors  appears  most  prom- 
inent in  history,  we  nevertheless  find  their  real 
principles  to  have  been  the  true  Matriarchal  one  of 
peace  and  industry.  Driven  from  the  northern  portion 
of  America  by  vindictive  foes,  compelled  to  take  up 
arms  in  self-protection,  yet  the  more  peaceful  occupa- 
tions of  hunting  and  agriculture  were  continually  fol- 
lowed. Their  history  was  preserved  by  means  of 
wampum,  while  under  their  women  the  science  of  gov- 
ernment  reached  the  highest  form  known  to  the  world. 
Among  the  Zunis  of  New  Mexico,  woman  still  preserves 
supreme  religious  and  political  authority;  the  Par- 
amount Council  consisting  of  six  priests  under  control 
of  a  supreme  priestess  who  is  the  most  important 
functionary  of  the  tribe.14  This  form  of  govern- 
ment is  traceable  to  their  earliest  civilization  at  which 
period    their    cities    were    grouped    in    sevens,  six  of 

xa.  Alexander:  History  0/  Women. 

13.  History  0/ the  United  States,  Vol.  I. 

14.  Cushing, 


20  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

them  constructed  upon  a  uniform  plan;  the  supreme 
seventh  containing  six  temples  clustered  about  a 
supreme  central  seventh  temple.  While  male  priests 
ruled  over  the  six  primal  cities  the  central  and  superior 
seventh  was  presided  over  by  a  priestess  who  not  alone 
officiated  at  the  central  temple,  but  to  whom  the  male 
priests  of  the  six  cities  and  six  inferior  temples  were 
subservient.  The  ancient  Lycians,  the  Sclavs,  the 
Basques  of  Spain,15  the  Veddas  of  Ceylon,16  the 
inhabitants  of  Malabar,  the  aborigines  of  widely 
separated  lands,  all  show  convincing  proof  of  woman's 
early  superiority  in  religion,  in  the  state, and  in  the 
family.  Monogamy  was  a  marked  feature  of  the  Mat- 
riarchate; Backofen,  who  has  written  voluminously 
upon  the  Matriarchate,  recognizes  it  as  peculiarly  char- 
acteristic of  woman's  government.  He  also  says  the 
people  who  possessed  the  Mother-rule  together  with 
Gynaikokraty  (girls'  rule,)  excelled  in  their  love  of 
peace  and  justice.  Under  the  Matriarchal  family  and 
tribal  system  even  long  after  its  partial  supersedence 
by  the  incoming  Patriarachate,  the  marriage  relation 
was  less  oppressive  to  woman  than  it  has  been  under 
most  centuries  of  christian  civilization.  Daughters 
were  free  in  their  choice  of  husbands,  no  form  of  a 
force  or  sale  existing.17 

15.  "What  is  most  to  be  considered  in  this  respect  are  the  political  rights 
which  women  in  time  of  the  Matriarchate  shared  with  the  men.  They  had 
indeed  the  right  to  vote  in  public  assemblies  still  exercised  not  very  long  ago 
among  the  Basques  in  the  Spanish  provinces." 

16.  That  the  Veddas  are  the  aborigines  of  Ceylon  may  be  assumed  from  the 
fact  that  the  highly  civilized  Singalese  admit  them  to  be  of  noble  rank.  Pre- 
Historic  Times. — Lubbuck. 

17.  "We  find  in  some  instances  this  independence  of  the  maiden  in  regard 
to  disposing  of  her  hand,  or  selecting  a  husband  as  a  memento  of  the  time  of  the 
Matriarchate.  *  *  The  most  remarkable  instance  of  the  self-disposition  of 
woman  we  find  among  the  ancient  Arabs  and  the  Hindoos;  among  the  latter  the 
virgin  was  permitted  to  select  her  own  husband  if  her  father  did  not  give  her  in 
marriage  within  three  years  after  her  maturity." 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  21 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  modern  examples  of  the 
Matriarchate  was  found  in  Malabar  at  the  time  of  its 
discovery  by  the  Portuguese  in  the  XV  century.  The 
Nairs  were  found  to  possess  a  fine  civilization,  entirely 
under  the  control  of  women,  at  a  period  when  woman's 
position  in  England  and  on  the  Continent  of  Europe, 
was  that  of  a  household  and  political  slave.  Of  Mala- 
bar it  has  been  said,  that  when  the  Portuguese  became 
acquainted  with  the  country  and  the  people,  they  were 
not  so  much  surprised  by  the  opulence  of  their  cities, 
the  splendor  of  all  their  habits  of  living,  the  great 
perfection  of  their  navy,  the  high  state  of  the  arts,  as 
they  were  to  find  all  this  under  the  entire  control  and 
government  of  women.  The  difference  in  civilization 
between  christian  Europe  and  pagan  Malabar  at  the 
time  of  its  discovery  was  indeed  great.  While  Europe 
with  its  new  art  of  printing,  was  struggling  against  the 
church  for  permission  to  use  type,  its  institutions  of 
learning  few,its  opportunities  for  education  meagre;  its 
terrible  inquisition  crushing  free  thought  and  sending 
thousands  each  year  to  a  most  painful  death,  the  un- 
cleanJiness  of  its  cities  and  the  country  such  as  to  bring 
frequent  visits  of  the  plague;  its  armies  and  its  navies 
with  but  one  exception,  imperfect;  its  women  forbid- 
den the  right  of  inheritance,  religious,  political, 
or  household  authority; — the  feminine  principle  en- 
tirely eliminated  from  the  divinity — a  purely  mascu- 
line God  the  universal  object  of  worship,  all  was 
directly  the  opposite  in  Malabar.  Cleanliness,  peace, 
the  arts,  a  just  form  of  government,  the  recognition 
of  the  feminine  both  in  humanity  and  in  the  divinity 
were  found  in  Malabar.  To  the  question  of  a  Danish 
missionary  concerning  their  opinion  of  a  Supreme  Be- 
ing, this  beautiful  answer  was  given. 


22  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

The  Supreme  Being  has  a  Form  and  yet  has  no  Form ; 
he  can  be  likened  to  nothing;  we  cannot  define  him  and 
say  that  he  is  this  or  that;  he  is  neither  Man  or 
Woman;  neither  Heaven  or  Earth,  and  yet  he  is  all; 
subject  to  no  corruption,  no  mortality  and  with 
neither  sleep  nor  rest,  he  is  Almighty  and  Omnipotent 
without  Beginning  and  without  End.18 

Under  the  Missionaries  sent  by  England  to  intro- 
duce her  own  barbaric  ideas  of  God  and  man,  this 
beautiful  Matriarchal  civilization  of  Malabar  soon  ret- 
rograded and  was  lost. 

The  ancient  Mound  Builders  of  America,  of  whom 
history  is  silent  and  science  profoundly  ignorant,  are 
proven  by  means  of  symbolism  to  have  been  under 
Matriarchal  rule,  and  Motherhood  religion.  Ancient- 
ly motherhood  was  represented  by  a  sphere  or  circle. 
The  circle,  like  the  mundane  egg,  which  is  but  an 
elongated  circle,  contains  everything  in  itself  and  is 
the  true  microcosm.  It  is  eternity,  it  is  feminine,  the 
creative  force,  representing  spirit.  Through  its  union 
with  matter  in  the  form  of  the  nine  digits  it  is  like- 
wise capable  of  representing  all  natural  things.19 
The  perfect  circle  of  Giotto  was  an  emblem  of  divine 
motherhood  in  its  completeness.  It  is  a  remarkable 
fact— its  significance  not  recognized, — that  the  roughly 
sketched  diameter  within  the  circle,  found  wherever 
boys  congregate,  is  an  ancient  mystic  sign20  signi- 
fying the  male  and  female,  or  the  double-sexed  deity. 
It  is  the   union    of   all  numbers,  the  one   within   the 

18.  Account  of  the  Religion,  Manners,  etc.,  of  the  People  of  Malabar,  etc.,  trans* 
lated  by  Mr.  Phillips,  1718. 

19.  Among  the  illustrative  types  of  interior  realities  and  the  elementary  geo- 
metric forms,  point,  direct  line  and  deflected  line,  the  last  of  which  is  a  true  arc 
produces  the  circle  when  carried  to  its  ultimate,  this  circle  representing  the 

triune  order  of  movement;  the  point  in  the  line,  the  line  in  the  curve,  and  the 
curve  in  the  circle—  The  Path. 

20.  The  phallus  and  lingum  (or  lingum  and  yoni),  the  point  within  the  circle 
or  diameter  within  the  circle.— Volney's  Ruins, 


tHE    MAfRIARCHATE  23 

zero  mark  comprising  ten,  and  as  part  of  the  ancient 
mysteries  signifying  God,  the  creative  power,  and 
eternal  life;  it  was  an  emblem  of  The  All. 

In  many  old  religions,  the  generative  principle  was 
regarded  as  the  mother  of  both  gods  and  men.  In  the 
Christian  religion  we  find  tendency  to  a  similar  recog- 
nition in  Catholic  worship  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  The 
most  ancient  Aryans  were  under  the  Matriarchate,  the 
feminine  recognized  as  the  creative  power.  The  word 
"ma"  from  which  all  descendants  of  those  peoples  de- 
rive their  names  for  mother,  was  synonymous  with 
'Creator.'  Renouf,  the  great  antiquarian  authority  up- 
on the  Aryan's,21  gives  the  songs  and  ceremonies  of  the 
wedding.  In  these,  the  woman  is  represented  as  having 
descended  to  man  from  association  with  divine  beings 
in  whose  custody  and  care  she  has  been,  and  who 
give  her  up  with  reluctance.  In  Sanscrit  mythology," 
the  feminine  is  represented  by  Swrya,  the  Sun, 
the  source  of  life,  while  the  masculine  is  described  as 
Soma,  a  body.  Soma,  a  beverage  of  the  gods  espec- 
ially sacred  to  Indra,was  the  price  paid  by  him  for  the 
assistance  of  Vayu,  the  swiftest  of  the  gods,  in  his 
battle  against  the  demon  Vritra.  A  curious  line  of 
thought  is  suggested.  The  marriage  of  the  man  to 
the  woman  was  symbolized  as  his  union  with  the  gods. 
Soma,  a  drink  devoted  to  Indra,  the  highest  god,  sig- 
nified his  use  of  a  body,  or  the  union  of  spirit  and 
body.  In  the  same  manner,  woman  representing  spirit, 
by  her  marriage  to  man  became  united  with  a  body. 
As  during  the  present  dark  age,  the  body  has  been  re- 
garded more  highly  than  the  spirit,  we  find  a  non-re- 
cognition  of  the  woman,  although   the  union  of  spirit 

21.  Chips  from  a  German  Work-Shop. — Max  Muller. 

22.  All  mythology  has  pertinently  been  characterized  at  ill-remembered 
history. 


24  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

and  body  is  symbolized  in  the  Christian  church  by  the 
sacrament  of  bread  and  wine.  During  the  purest 
period  of  Aryan  history  marriage  was  entirely  optional 
with  woman  and  when  entered  into,  frequent- 
ly meant  no  more  than  spiritual  companionship. 
Woman  equally  with  man  was  entitled  to  the  Brah- 
minical  thread;  she  also  possessed  the  right  to  study 
and  preach  the  Vedas,  which  was  in  itself  a  proof  of 
her  high  position  in  this  race.  The  Vedas,  believed 
to  be  the  oldest  literature  extant,  were  for  many  ages 
taught  orally  requiring  years  of  close  application  upon 
part  of  both  teacher  and  student. 

The  word  "Veda"  signifies  to-know;  the  latter  from 
"Vidya"  meaning  wise.  The  English  term  widow  is 
tracable  to  both  forms  of  the  word,  meaning  a  wise 
woman — one  who  knows  man.  Many  ages  passed  be- 
fore the  Vedas  were  committed  to  writing.23  At 
that  early  day  the  ancestral  worship  of  women — 
departed  mothers — was  as  frequent  as  that  of  departed 
fathers,  women  conducting  such  services  which  took 
place  three  times  a  day.  In  the  old  Aryan  Scriptures 
the  right  of  woman  to  hold  property,  and  to  her  chil- 
dren, was  much  more  fully  recognized  than  under  the 
Christian  codes  of  to-day.  Many  of  the  olden  rights 
of  women  are  still  extant  in  India.  The  learned 
Keshub  Chunder  Sen  vigorously  protested  against  the 
introduction  of  English  law  into  India,  upon  the 
ground  that  it  would  destroy  the  ancient  rights  of  the 

23.  In  the  Rig-Veda,  a  work  not  committed  to  writing  until  after  that  move- 
ment of  the  Aryans,  which  resulted  in  the  establishment  of  Persia  and  India. 
*  *  there  is  nothing  more  striking  than  the  status  of  woman  at  that  early  age. 
Then  the  departed  mothers  were  served  as  faithfully  by  the  younger  members  of 
the  family  as  departed  fathers.  The  mother  quite  as  often,  if  not  more  fre- 
quently than  the  father,  conducted  the  services  of  the  dead  ancestry,  which  took 
place  three  times  a  day,  often  consisting  of  improvised  poetry.— Elizabeth  Pea- 
body  on  the  Aryans, 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  25 

women  of  that  country.  It  was  primal  Indian  law 
that  upon  the  death  of  the  husband  the  wife  should 
heir  all  his  property.  Marriage  was  regarded  as  an 
eternal  union,  the  two,  by  this  act,  having  so  fully  be- 
come one,  that  upon  the  husband's  death,  one  half  of 
his  body  was  still  living.  The  property  and  the  child- 
ren were  held  as  equally  belonging  to  the  husband  or 
the  wife. 

Colebrook's  Digest  of  Hindoo  Law,  compiled  from 
the  writings  of  the  Bengal  Pundit  Jergunnat, 'NaTer- 
capanchama,  from  those  of  Vasist  ha,  Cdtayana,  and 
other  Indian  authorities  says: 

In  the  Veda,  in  Codes  of  Law,  in  sacred  ordinances, 
the  wife  is  held  as  one  person  with  the  husband;  both 
are  considered  one.  When  the  wife  is  not  dead,  half 
the  body  remains;  how  shall  another  take  the  property 
when  half  the  body  of  the  owner  lives?  After  the 
death  of  the  husband  the  widow  shall  take  his  wealth; 
this  is  primeval  law. 

Though  a  woman  be  dependent,  the  alienation  of 
female  property,  or  of  the  mother's  right  over  her  son 
by  the  gift  of  a  husband  alone24  is  not  valid  in 
law  or  reason; 

The  female  property  of  wives  like  the  property  of  a 
stranger,  may  not  be  given,  for  there  is  want  of  own- 
ership. 

Neither  the  husband,  nor  the  son,  nor  the  father, 
nor  the  brother,  have  power  to  use  or  alien  the  legal 
property  of  a  woman. 

We  hold  it  proper  that  the  wife's  co-operation 
shall  be  required  in  civil  contracts  and  in  religious 
acts  under  the  text. 

A  gift  to  a  wife  is  irrevocable. 

The  collection  of  East  Indian  laws  -made  under 
authority   of    the    celebrated    Warren   Hastings,    1776, 

24.  There  are  but  few  of  the  United  States  in  which  the  authority  of  the 
father  to  bind  out  a  living  child  or  to  will  away  an  unborn  one,  is  not  recognized 
as  valid  without  the  mother's  consent. 


26  WOMAN,    CHURCH  ANt)   STATE 

is  of  similar  character.  The  kinds  of  property  a  wife 
can  hold  separate  from  her  husband  at  her  own  dis- 
posal by  will,  are  specified. 

During  long  centuries  while  under  Christian  law  the 
Christian  wife  was  not  allowed  even  the  control  of 
property  her  own  at  the  time  of  marriage,  or  of  that 
which  might  afterwards  be  given  her,  and  her  right 
of  the  disposition  of  property  at  the  time  of  her  death 
was  not  recognized  in  Christian  lands,  the  Hindoo 
wife  under  immemorial  custom  could  receive  prop- 
erty by  gift  alike  from  her  parents,  or  from  strangers, 
or  acquire  it  by  her  own  industry,  and  property  thus 
gained  was  at  her  own  disposal  in  case  of  her  death. 
Another  remarkable  feature  of  Indian  law  contrasting 
with  that  of  Christian  lands  was  preference  of  woman 
over  man  in  heirship.  In  case  of  a  daughter's  death, 
*he  mother  heired  in  preference  to  father,  son,  or  even 
husband. 

That  is  called  a  woman's  property;  First.  What- 
ever she  owns  during  the  Agamini  Shadee,  i.  e.  Days 
of  Marriage;  *  *  *  * 

Whatever  she  may  receive  from  any  person  as  she 
is  going  to  her  husband's  home  or  coming  from 
thence. 

Whatever  her  husband  may  at  any  time  have  given 
her;  whatever  she  has  received  at  any  time  from  a 
brother;  and  whatever  her  father  and  mother  may 
have  given  her. 

Whatever  her  husband  on  contracting  a  second  mar- 
riage may  give  her  to  pacify  her. 

Whatever  a  person  may  have  given  a  woman  for 
food  or  clothing. 

Whatever  jewelry  or  wearing  apparel  she  may  have 
received  from  any  person;  also  whatever  a  woman 
may  receive  from  any  person  as  an  acknowledgment 
or  payment  for  any  work  performed  by  her.  Whatever 
she  may  by  accident  have  found  anywhere. 


THE    MATRIARCMATE  2J 

Whatever  she  may  gain  by  painting,  spinning, 
needle-work  or  any  employment  of  this  kind. 

Except  from  one  of  the  family  of  her  father,  one  of 
the  family  of  her  mother,  or  one  of  the  family  of  her 
husband,  whatever  she  may  receive  from  any  other 
person.  Also  if  the  father  or  mother  of  a  girl  give 
anything  to  their  son-in-law,  saying  at  the  same  time: 
"This  shall  go  to  our  daughter,"  and  even  without  any 
words  to  this  purpose  at  the  time  of  making  the  gift, 
if  they  merely  have  it  in  their  intention  that  the 
thing  thus  given  should  revert  to  their  daughter,  all 
and  every  one  of  these  articles  are  called  a  woman's 
property. 

Her  right  of  final  disposal  by  will  is  also  specified. 
Her  effects  acquired  during  marriage  go  to  her  daugh- 
ters in  preference  to  her  sons,  and  possessing  no 
daughters,  to  her  mother. 

When  a  woman  dies,  then  whatever  effects  she  ac- 
quired during  the  Agamini  Shadee,  even  though  she 
hath  a  son  living,  shall  go  first  to  her  unmarried 
daughter;  if  there  is  but  one  unmarried  daughter  she 
shall  obtain  the  whole;  if  there  are  several  unmarried 
daughters,  they  all  shall  have  equal  share. 

Property  under  the  three  forms  of  marriage,  if  no 
unmarried  daughters  and  others  mentioned  here,  goes 
to  her  mother  before  to  her  father;  and  if  neither,  to 
her  husband,  and  if  no  husband  to  husband's  younger 
brother,  or  several  younger  brothers,  (if  several). 

The  specification  of  gifts  of  intention  is  remarkable 
in  securing  property  to  the  wife  that  was  seemingly 
given  by  the  parents  to  the  husband  alone.  An 
equally  remarkable  fact  is  the  father's  heirship  in 
preference  to  the  husband's,  and  the  heirship  of  the 
daughters  and  mother  in  preference  to  any  male  rela- 
tive however  near,  and  is  in  striking  contrast  to 
Christian  law  in  reference  to  woman's  property.  If  a 
husband  neglect  to  provide  his  wife  necessary  food 
and  clothing,  the  East  Indian  wife  is  allowed  to  pro- 


28  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

cure  them  by  any  means  in  her  power.  Maine  has  not 
failed  to  recognize  the  superior  authority  of  the  eastern 
wife  in  relation  to  property  over  that  of  the  Christian 
wife.      He  says: 

"The  settled  property  of  a  married  woman  inca- 
pable of  alienation  by  her  husband,  is  well  known  to 
the  Hindoos  under  the  name  of  Stridham." 

It  is  certainly  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  institu- 
tion seems  to  have  developed  among  the  Hindoos  at  a 
period  relatively  much  earlier  than  among  the  Romans. 
The  Mitakshara,  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  revered 
authorities  of  the  Hindoo  judicial  treatises,  defines 
Stridham,  or  woman's  property,  as  that  which  is  given 
to  the  wife  by  the  father,  the  mother,  or  a  brother  at 
the  time  of  the  wedding,  before  the  nuptial  fire. 

But  adds  Maine: 

"The  compiler  of  Mitakshara  adds  a  proportion  not 
found  elsewhere;  also  property  which  she  may  have 
acquired  by  inheritance,  purchase,  partition,  seizure 
or  finding,  is  denominated  woman's  property.  *  *  If  all 
this  be  Stridham,  it  follows  that  the  ancient  Hindoo 
law  secured  to  married  women  an  even  greater  degree 
of  proprietary  independence  than  that  given  to  them 
by  the  modern  English  Married  Woman's  Property 
Act. 

Property  is  common  to  the  husband  and  the  wife. 
The  ample  support  of  those  who  are  entitled  to  main- 
tenance is  rewarded  with  bliss  in  heaven;  but  hell 
is  the  portion  of  that  man  whose  family  is  afflicted 
with  pain  by  his  neglect.  Therefore  the  Hindoo  hus- 
band is  taught  to  maintain  his  family  with  the  utmost 
care.  Maxims  from  the  sacred  books  show  the  regard 
in  which  the  Hindoo  woman  is  held: 

"He  who  despises  woman  despises  his  mother." 

"Who  is  cursed  by  woman  is  cursed  by  God." 

"The  tears  of  a  woman  call  down  the  fire  of  heaven 
on  those  who  make  them  flow." 

"Evil  to  him  who  laughs  at  woman's  sufferings;  God 
shall  laugh  at  his  prayers." 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  20, 

"It  was  at  the  prayer  of  a  woman  that  the  Creator 
pardoned  man;  cursed  be  he  who  forgets  it." 

"Who  shall  forget  the  sufferings  of  his  mother  at 
his  birth  shall  be  reborn  in  the  body  of  an  owl  during 
three  successive  transmigrations." 

"There  is  no  crime  more  odious  than  to  persecute 
woman." 

"When  women  are  honored  the  divinities  are  con- 
tent; but  when  they  are  not  honored  all  undertakings 
fail." 

"The  households  cursed  by  women  to  whom  they  have 
not  rendered  the  homage  due  them,  find  themselves 
weighed  down  with  ruin  and  destroyed  as  if  they  had 
been  struck  by  some  secret  power. " 

"We  will  not  admit  the  people  of  to-day  are  inca- 
pable of  comprehending  woman,  who  alone  can  regen- 
erate them." 

The  marriage  ceremony  is  of  the  slightest  kind  and 
under  three  forms: 

1.  Of  mutual  consent  by  the  interchange  of  neck- 
laces or  strings  of  flowers  in  some  secret  place. 

2.  A  woman  says,  "I  am  become  your  wife,"  and 
the  man  says,  "I  acknowedge  it." 

3.  When  the  parents  of  a  girl  on  her  marriage  day 
say  to  the  bridegroom:  "Whatever  act  of  religion  you 
perform,  perform  it  with  our  daughter,"  and  the 
bridegroom  assents  to  this  speech. 

The  comparatively  modern  custom  of  suttee  origi- 
nated with  the  priests,  whose  avaricious  desires 
created  this  system  in  order  thereby  to  secure  the 
property  of  the  widow.  The  Vedas  do  not  counte- 
nance either  suttee  or  the  widow's  relinquishment  of 
her  property,  the  law  specifically  declaring  "If  a 
widow  should  give  all  her  property  and  estate  to  the 
Brahmins  for  religious  purposes,  the  gift  indeed  is 
valid,  but  the  act  is  improper  and  the  woman  blam- 
able."  An  ancient  scripture  declares  that  "All  the 
wisdom  of  the  Vedas,  and  all  that   has  been  written  in 


30  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

books,  is  to  be  found  concealed  in  the  heart  of  a 
woman."  It  is  a  Hindoo  maxim  that  one  mother  is 
worth  a  thousand  fathers,  because  the  mother  carries 
and  nourishes  the  infant  from  her  own  body,  therefore 
the  mother  is  most  reverenced.  A  Hindoo  proverb 
declares  that  "Who  leaves  his  family  naked  and  unfed 
may  taste  honey  at  first,  but  shall  afterwards  find  it 
poison."  Another  says,  "A  wife  is  a  friend  in  the 
house  of  the  good." 

Ancient  Egypt  worshiped  two  classes  of  gods;  one 
purely  spiritual  and  eternal,  the  other  secondary  but 
best  beloved,  were  believed  to  have  been  human  beings 
who  from  the  services  they  had  rendered  to  humanity 
were  upon  death  admitted  to  the  assembly  of  the  gods. 
Such  deification  common  in  ancient  times,  is  still 
customary  in  some  parts  of  the  earth.  Within  the 
past  few  years  a  countryman  of  our  own  was  thus 
apotheosized  by  the  Chinese  to  whom  he  had  rendered 
valuable  service  at  the  time  of  the  Tae-ping  rebel- 
lion.26 Ancient  Egyptians  recognized  a  masculine 
and  feminine  principle  entering  in  all  things  both 
material  and  spiritual.  Isis,  the  best  beloved  and 
most  worshiped  of  the  secondary  gods,  was  believed 
by  them  to  have  been  a  woman  who  at  an  early 
period  of  Egyptian  history  had  rendered  that  people 
invaluable  service.  She  was  acknowledged  as  their 
earliest  law-maker,  through  whose  teaching  the  people 
had  risen  from  barbarism  to  civilization.     She  taught 

26.  Ward,  the  American  who  rendered  such  service  to  the  Chinese  Emperor, 
has  been  deified.  The  Emperor,  in  a  recent  edict,  has  placed  him  among  the 
major  gods  of  China,  commanding  shrines  to  be  built  and  worship  to  be  paid 
to  the  memory  of  this  American.  The  people  are  worshiping  him  along  with 
the  most  ancient  and  powerful  deities  of  their  religion  as  a  great  deliverer  from 
war  and  famine— as  a  powerful  god  in  the  form  of  man.  In  every  household, 
school  and  temple,  his  name  will  be  thus  commemorated.—  Newspaper  Report, 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  31 

them  the  art  of  making  bread2*  from  the  cereals  there- 
tofore growing  wild  and  unused,  the  inhabitants  at  an 
early  day  living  upon  roots  and  herbs.  Egypt  soon 
became  the  grain  growing  portion  of  the  globe,  her 
enormous  crops  of  wheat  not  alone  aiding  herself,  but 
rendering  the  long  stability  of  the  Roman  Empire  pos- 
sible. The  science  of  medicine  was  believed  to  have 
originated  with  Isis;  she  was  also  said  to  have  in- 
vented the  art  of  embalming,  established  their  litera- 
ture, founded  their  religion.  The  whole  Egyptian 
civilization  was  ascribed  to  the  woman-goddess,  Isis, 
whose  name  primarily  Ish-Ish,  signified  Light,  Life." 
Isis,  and  Nepthys — the  Lady  of  the  House — were  wor- 
shiped as  the  Beginning  and  the  End.  They  were  the 
Alpha  and  Omega  of  the  most  ancient  Egyptian  relig- 
ion.    The  statues  of  Isis  bore  this  inscription: 

"I  am  all  that  has  been,  all  that  shall  be,  and  none 
among  mortals  has  hitherto  taken  off  my  veil.** 

Isis  was  believed  to  contain  germs  within  herself 
for  the  reproduction  of  all  living  things.  The  most 
universal  of  her  10,000  names  was,  "Potent  Mother 
Goddess. "  ,8This  Egyptian  regard  for  Isis  is  an  ex- 
tremely curious  and  interesting  reminiscence  of  the 
Matriarchal  period.  Her  worship  was  universal 
throughout  Egypt.  Her  temples  were  magnificent. 
Her  priests,  consecrated  to  purity,  were  required  to 
bathe  daily,  to  wear  linen  garments  unmixed  with 
animal    fibre,  to    abstain    from   animal  food,  and  also 

26.  Diodorus  Siculus. 

27.  "I  am  nature,  the  parent  of  all  things,  the  sovereign  of  the  elements,  the 
primary  progeny  of  time,  the  most  exalted  of  the  deities,  the  first  of  the 
heavenly  gods  and  goddesses,  the  queen  of  the  shades,  the  uniform  countenance* 
who  dispose  with  my  rod  the  innumerable  lights  of  heaven." 

28.  The  salubrious  breezes  of  the  sea,  and  the  mournful  silence  of  the  dead' 
whose  single  deity  the  whole  world  venerates  in  many  forms  with  various  rites 
and  many  names.  The  Egyptians,  skilled  in  ancient  lore,  worship  me  with 
proper  ceremonies  and  call  me  by  my  true  name— Queen  Isis. 


32  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

from  those  vegetables  regarded  as  impure.29  Two 
magnificent  festivals  were  yearly  celebrated  in  her 
honor,  the  whole  people  taking  part.  During  one  of 
these  festivals  her  priests  bore  a  golden  ship  in  the 
procession.  The  ship,  or  arkf°  is  peculiarly  signifi- 
cative of  the  feminine  principle,  and  wherever  found 
is  a  reminiscence  of  the  Matriarchate.  The  most  sacred 
mysteries  of  the  Egyptian  religion,  whose  secrets  even 
Pythagorus  could  not  penetrate,  to  which  Herodotus 
alluded  with  awe,  and  that  were  unknown  to  any  per- 
son except  the  highest  order  of  priests,  owed  their 
institution  to  Isis,  and  were  based  upon  moral  re- 
sponsibility and  a  belief  in  a  future  life.  The  im- 
mortality of  the  soul  was  the  underlying  principle  of 
the  Egyptian  religion. 

Isis  seems  to  have  been  one  of  those  extraordinary 
individuals,  such  as  occasionally  in  the  history  of  the 
world  have  created  a  literature,  founded  a  religion, 
established  a  nationality.  She  was  a  person  of  super- 
ior mentality,    with     power    to    diffuse    intelligence. 

Moses,  "learned  in  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyp- 
tians," borrowed  much  from  Isis.  The  forms  and 
ceremonies  used  in  her  worship  were  largely  copied 
by  him,  yet  lacked  the  great  moral  element — immortal 
life  — so  conspicuously  taught  as  a  part  of  Egyptian 
religion.  The  Sacred  Songs  of  Isis  were  an  important 
part  of  the  literature  of  Egypt.  Plato,  who  burned 
his  own  poems  after  reading  Homer,  declared  them 
worthy  of  the  divinity,  believing  them  to  be  literally 
10,000  years  old.31  All  orders  of  the  priesthood  were 
open  to  women  in   Egypt;    sacred   colleges  existed  for 

29.  Leeks,  garlic,  onions  and  beans. 

30.  All  the  ancient  nations  appear  to  have  had  an  ark  or  arena,  in  which  to 
conceal  something  sacred.— Godfrey  Higgins,  Anacalypsts  I%  347. 

31.  The  Sacred  Song  of  Moses  and  Miriam  was  an  early  part  of  Jewish 
literature;  the  idea  was  borrowed  like  the  ark  from  the  religion  of  Isis.  . 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  33 

them,  within  whose  walls  dwelt  an  order  of  priest- 
esses known  as  "God's  Hand,"  "God's  Star."  Its 
ranks  were  recruited  from  women  of  the  principal 
families,  whose  only  employment  was  the  service  of 
the  gods.  "Daughter  of  the  Deity,"  signified  a 
priestess. 

Women  performed  the  most  holy  offices  of  religion, 
carrying  the  Sacred  Sistrum  and  offering  sacrifices  of 
milk,  both  ceremonies  of  great  dignity  and  import- 
ance, being  regarded  as  the  most  sacred  service  of  the 
divinity.  Such  sacrificial  rites  were  confined  to  queens 
and  princesses  of  the  royal  household.  Am£s-Nofri- 
Ari,  a  queen  who  received  great  honor  from  Egyptians, 
spoken  of  as  the  "goddess-wife  of  Amun,"  the  supreme 
god  of  Thebes,  for  whose  worship  the  wonderful 
temple  ot  Karnak  was  founded  by  a  Pharaoh  of  the 
XII.  dynasty,  is  depicted  on  the  monuments  as  the 
Chief  High  Priest — the  Sem,  whose  specific  duty  was 
offering  sacrifices  and  pouring  out  libations  in  that 
temple.  By  virtue  of  her  high  office  she  preceded  her 
husband,  the  powerful  and  renowned  Rameses  II. 
The  high  offices  of  the  church  were  as  habitually  held 
by  women  as  by  men;  Princess  Neferhotep,  of  the 
fifth  dynasty,  was  both  a  priestess  and  a  prophetess  of 
the  goddesses  Hathor  and  Neith,  the  representatives  of 
celestial  space,  in  which  things  were  both  created  and 
preserved. 

A  priestess  and  priest  in  time  of  the  XIII.  Pharaoh 
represented  on  a  slab  of  limestone,  in  possession  of 
the  Ashmolean  Library  of  Oxford,  England,  is  believed 
to  be  the  oldest  monument  of  its  kind  in  the  world, 
dating  to  3,500,  B.   C. 

Queen  Hatasu,  the  light  of  the  brilliant  XVIII. 
dynasty,  is  depicted  upon  the  monuments  as  preceding 


34  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

in  acts  of  worship  the  great  Thotmes  III,  her  brother, 
whom  she  had  associated  with  herself  upon  the  throne, 
but  who  did  not  acquire  supreme  power  until  after  her 
death.82  The  reign  of  Hatasu  was  pre-eminent  as 
the  great  architectural  period  of  Egypt,  the  engraving 
upon  monuments  during  her  reign  closely  resembling 
the  finest  Greek  intaglio.  Egypt,  so  famous  for  her 
gardens  and  her  art  of  forcing  blossoms  out  of  season, 
was  indebted  to  this  great  queen  for  the  first  acclimat- 
izing of  plants.  Upon  one  of  her  voyages  she  brought 
with  her  in  baskets  filled  with  earth  several  of  those 
Balsam  trees  from  Arabia,  which  were  numbered 
among  the  precious  gifts  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba  to 
King  Solomon.  The  red  granite  obelisks  erected  by 
Hatasu  before  the  gates  of  Karnak,  the  most  magnificent 
and  loftiest  ever  erected  in  Egypt,  were  ninety-seven 
feet  in  height  and  surmounted  by  a  pyramid  of  gold. 

As  early  as  the  XI.  Pharaoh,  II.  dynasty,  the  royal 
succession  became  fixed  in  the  female  line.  A  prin- 
cess was  endowed  with  privileges  superior  to  a  prince, 
her  brother,  her  children  reigning  by  royal  prerogative 
even  when  her  husband  was  a  commoner;  the  child- 
ren of  a  prince  of  the  Pharaonic  house  making  such 
marriage  were  declared  illegitimate. 

From  the  highest  to  the  most  humble  priestly  office, 
women  officiated  in  Egypt.  A  class  of  sacred  women 
were  doorkeepers  of  temples,  another  order  known  as 
"Sacred  Scribes"  were  paid  great  deference.  The 
Pellices  or  Pellucidae  of  Amun  were  a  remarkable 
body  of  priestesses  whose  burial  place  has  but  recently 
been  discovered.  They  were  especially  devoted  to  the 
service  of  Amun-Ra,  the  Theban  Jove.     Egypt  was  in- 

32.  The  throne  of  this  brilliant  queen  who  reigned  1600  years  B.  C  has 
recently  been  deposited  in  the  British  Museum.  Her  portrait,  also  brought  to 
light,  shows  Caucasian  features  with  a  dimpled  chin. 


THE    MATRIARCHATE.  35 

debted  to  priestesses  for  some  of  its  most  important 
literature.  To  Penthelia,  a  priestess  of-  Phtha**  the 
God  of  Fire,  in  Memphis,  Bryant  ascribes  the  author- 
ship of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  Homer14  in  his 
travels  through  that  country,  by  aid  of  a  suborned  priest, 
having  stolen  these  poems  from  the  archives  of  the  tem- 
ples of  Phtha  where  they  had  been  deposited  for  safe 
keeping. 

The  priestly  class  of  prophetesses  was  large  in 
Egypt,  their  predictions  not  infrequently  changing  the 
course  of  that  country's  history.  To  his  daughter,  the 
prophet-priestess  Athryte,  was  the  great  Rameses  II 
indebted  for  the  prophecy  which  led  him  into  his  con- 
quering and  victorious  career.  Known  as  one  of  the 
four  great  conquerors  of  antiquity,85  reigning  sixty 
years,  he  greatly  added  to  the  wealth  and  renown  of 
Egypt. 

The  class  of  priestesses  called  Sibyls  were  early 
known  in  Egypt,  India,  and  other  portions  of  the  ancient 
world.  They  were  regarded  as  the  most  holy  order  of 
the   priesthood   and   held    to   be  in  direct   communion 

33.  Bryant  was  an  English  writer  of  the  last  century,  a  graduate  of  Cam- 
bridge who  looked  into  many  abstruse  questions  relating  to  ancient  history. 
In  1796,  eight  years  before  his  death,  he  published  "  A  Dissertation  Concerning 
the  War  of  Troy." 

34.  That  Homer  came  into  Egypt,  amongst  other  arguments  they  endeavor 
to  prove  it  especially  by  the  potion  Helen  gave  Telemachus— in  the  story  of 
Menelaus— to  cause  him  to  forget  all  his  sorrows  past,  for  the  poet  seems  to 
have  made  an  exact  experiment  of  the  potion  Nepenthes,  which  he  says  Helen 
received  from  Polymnestes,  the  wife  of  Thonus,  and  brought  it  from  Thebes  in 
Egypt ;  and  indeed  in  that  city,  even  at  this  day,  the  women  use  this  medicine 
with  good  success,  and  they  say  that  in  ancient  times  the  medicine  for  the  cure 
of  anger  and  sorrow  was  only  to  be  found  among  the  Diospolitans,  Thebes  and 
Diospolis  being  affirmed  by  them  to  be  one  and  the  same  city.—  Diodor us  Sicu- 
lus,  Vol.  I,  Chap.  VII. 

35.  The  remaining  three  were  Cyrus,  Nebuchadnezzar  and  Alexander. 
Cyrus  met  defeat  and  death  at  the  hands  of  Tomyris,  queen  of  the  Scythians, 
who  caused  him  to  be  crucified,  a  punishment  deemed  so  ignominious  by  the 
Romans  that  it  was  not  inflicted  upon  the  most  criminal  of  their  citizens.  Be- 
cause of  his  barbarity,  Tomyris  caused  the  head  of  Cyrut  to  be  plunged  into  a 
sack  of  blood  "that  he  might  drink  his  fill." 


36  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

with  the  gods,  who  through  them  revealed  secrets 
to  the  lower  order  of  priests;  the  word  Sibyl  originat- 
ing from  Syros,  i.  e.  God.  The  learned  Beale  defines 
Sibyl  as  thought,  therefore  a  woman  in  possession  of 
God's  thought.  The  names  of  ten  renowned  Sibyls 
have  come  down  to  our  day.  The  Sibyline  Books  for 
many  years  governed  the  destinies  of  Rome.  Oracles 
were  rendered  from  the  lips  of  a  priestess  known  as 
the  Pythia;  the  famous  Delphian  Shrine  for  ages  rul- 
ing the  course  of  kings  and  nations. 

Upon  the  monuments  of  Egypt,  those  indisputable 
historic  records,  queens  alone  are  found  wearing  the 
triple  crown,  significant  of  ecclesiastical,  judicial 
and  civil  power,  thus  confirming  the  statement  of 
Diodorus  that  queens  were  shown  greater  respect  and 
possessed  more  power  tKan  kings:  the  pope  alone  in 
modern  times  claiming  the  emblematic  triple  crown. 
A  comparison  between  the  men  and  women  of  the 
common  people  of  this  country,  shows  no  less  favor- 
ably for  the  latter.  Women  were  traders,  buying  and 
selling  in  the  markets  while  the  men  engaged  in  the 
more  laborious  work  of  weaving  at  home.  Woman's 
medical  and  hygienic  knowledge  is  proven  by  the 
small  number  of  infantile  deaths.36  At  the  marriage 
ceremony  the  husband  promised  obedience  to  the  wife 
in  all  things,  took  her  name,  and  his  property  passed 
into  her  control;  according  to  Wilkinson  great 
harmony  existed  in  the  marriage  relation,  the  husband 
and  wife  sitting  upon  the  same  double  chair  in  life 
and  resting  at  death  in  the  same  tomb. 

Montesquieu  says: 

It  must  be  admitted  although  it  shocks  our  present 
customs,  that  among  the  most  polished  peoples,  wives 

36.  Very  few  mummiei  of  children  have  been  found.— Wilkinson,  Ancient 
Egyptian*, 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  37 

have  always  had  authority  over  their  husbands.  The 
Egyptians  established  it  by  law  in  honor  of  Isis,  and 
the  Babylonians  did  the  same  in  time  of  Semiramis. 
It  has  been  said  of  the  Romans  that  they  ruled  all 
nations  but  obeyed  their  wives. 

Crimes  against  women  were  rare  in  Egypt  and 
when  occurring  were  most  severely  punished. 37Rameses 
III.  caused  this  inscription  to  be  engraved  upon  his 
monuments: 

To  unprotected  woman  there  is  freedom  to  wander 
through  the  whole  country  wheresoever  she  list  with- 
out apprehending  danger. 

A  woman  was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  ancient 
Parsee  religion,  which  taught  the  existence  of  but  a 
single  god,  thus  introducing  monotheism  into  that  rare 
old  kingdom.  Until  the  introduction  of  Christianity 
woman  largely  preserved  the  liberty  belonging  to  her 
in  the  old  civilizations.  Of  her  position  under  Roman 
law  before    this  period   Maine    (Gaius)    says; 

The  jurisconsults  had  evidently  at  this  time 
assumed  the  equality  of  the  sexes  as  a  principle  of  the 
law  of  equity.  The  situation  of  the  Roman  woman 
whether  married  or  single  became  one  of  great  per- 
sonal and  proprietary  independence;  but  Christianity 
tended  somewhat  from  the  commencement  to  narrow 
this  remarkable  liberty.  The  prevailing  state  of  relig- 
ious sentiment  may  explain  why  modern  jurisprudence 
has  adopted  these  rules  concerning  the  position  of 
women  which  belong  to  an  imperfect  civilization.  No 
society  which  preserves  any  tincture  of  Christian 
institutions  is  likely  to  restore  to  married  women  the 
personal  liberty  conferred  on  them  by  middle  Roman 
law.     Canon  law  has  deeply  injured  civilization. 

Rome  not    only    secured    remarkable    personal    and 

37-  In  relation  to  women  the  laws  were  very  severe;  for  one  that  committed  a 
a  rape  upon  a  free  woman  was  condemned  to  have  his  privy  member  cut  ofl;  for 
they  judged  that  the  three  most  heinous  offenses  were  included  in  that  one  vile 
act,  that  is  wrong,  defilement  and  bastardy.—  Diodorus,  Vol.  I,  Chap.  VII. 


38  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

proprietary  rights  to  woman,  but  as  Vestal  Virgin, 
she  held  the  highest  priestly  office.  No  shrine  equalled 
that  of  the  Vestals  in  sanctity;  none  was  so  honored 
by  the  state.  To  their  care  the  sacred  Fire  was 
entrusted,  and  also  the  Palladium;  those  unknown  arti- 
cles upon  whose  preservation  not  alone  the  welfare  but 
the  very  existence  of  Rome  was  held  to  depend.  The 
most  important  secrets  of  state  were  entrusted  to 
them  and  their  influence  in  civil  affairs  was  scarcely 
secondary  to  their  religious  authority.  In  troubled 
times,  in  civil  wars,  in  extreme  emergencies  of  the 
commonwealth  they  acted  as  ambassdors,  or  were 
chosen  umpires  to  restore  peace  between  the  parties. 
In  state  ceremonies,  in  the  most  solemn,  civil  or 
religious  meetings  they  performed  important  duties. 
They  were  superior  to  the  common  law  or  the  author- 
ity of  the  consul.  The  most  important  secrets  were 
entrusted  to  them,  wills  of  the  emperors  and  docu- 
ments of  state  confided  to  their  care;  offenses  against 
them  were  punished  with  death.  If  meeting  a  crimi- 
nal on  his  way  to  excution,  he  was  pardoned  as  a 
direct  intervention  of  heaven  in  his  behalf.  Among 
their  important  privileges  was  exemption  from  public 
taxes,  the  right  to  make  a  will,  interment  within  the 
city  walls,  the  right  to  drive  in  the  city  where  no 
other  carriage  was  allowed;  even  the  consuls  were 
obliged  to  make  room  for  them  to  pass.  Chosen  from 
noble  families  when  between  the  ages  of  six  and  ten, 
their  terms  of  service  was  thirty  years. 

The  order  of  Vestal  Virgins  flourished  eleven  hun- 
dred years,  having  been  founded  seven  hundred  years 
before  the  Christian  era  and  continuing  four  hundred 
years  afterwards.  But  those  women  all  young,  all 
between  the  ages   of   six   years   and   forty,    so  closely 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  39 

guarded  the  secrets  of  the  Penetralia  that  to  this  day 
they  stiJl  remain  as  unknown  as  when  in  their  charge. 
The  order  was  destroyed  in  the  fourth  century,  but 
the  ruins  of  their  temple  recently  discovered  prove 
that  when  obliged  to  flee  from  the  sacred  enclosure 
they  first  demolished  the  most  holy  portion  where  the 
secrets  of  Rome  were  hidden.38  Recent  important 
archaeological  discoveries  at  the  Atrium  Vertae  in  the 
Forum,  corroborate  history  in  regard  to  the  high  posi- 
tion and  extraordinary  privileges  of  the  Vestals.  Sev- 
eral statues  have  been  found  representing  the  sacred 
maiden  with  the  historic  fillet  about  her  head  and  the 
cord  beneath  her  breast.  Medallions  worn  upon  the 
breast  of  their  horses  have  also  been  unearthed.  The 
wealth  of  the  order  was  extremely  great,  both  its 
public  and  private  property  being  exempt  from  that 
conscription  which  in  times  of  war  reached  all  but  a 
few  favored  individuals. 

The  names  by  which  Imperial  Rome  was  known 
were  all  feminine;  Roma,  Flora,  Valentia;  nearly  its 
first  and  greatest  goddess  was  Vesta.39 

Sacred  and  secret  were  originally  synonymous 
terms.  All  learningjvajs  sacred,  consequently  secret, 
and  as  only  those  possessed  of  learning  were  eligible 
to  the  priestly  office  it  is  readily  seen  that  knowledge 
was  a  common  heritage  of  primitive  women.  Letters, 
numbers,  astrology,  geography  and  all  branches  of 
science  were  secrets  known  only  to  initiates.  The 
origin  of  the  most  celebrated  mysteries,  the  Eleusinian, 
and  those  of  Isis,  were  attributed  to  woman,  the 
most  perfect  temple  of    ancient  or  modern    times,   the 

38.  Ancient  Rome  in  the  Light  of  Recent  Discoveries.  Chapter  on  the  Vestals. 
— Lanciani. 

39.  The  Anacalypsis  II,  241. 


40  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Parthenon,  or  Temple  of  the  Virgins,  was  dedicated 
to  the  goddess  Minerva. 

Chryseis  was  priestess  of  Juno  in  Argo.  This  office 
was  of  great  civil  as  well  as  religious  importance 
regulating  their  dates  and  chronology.  To  the  present 
day  in  China  woman  assists  at  the  altar  in  ancestral 
worship,  the  prevailing  form  of  religious  adoration. 
The  mother  of  a  family  is  treated  with  the  greatest 
respect40  and  the  combined  male  and  female  principle 
is  represented  in  god  under  the  name  Fou-Fou,  that 
is,  Father-Mother.41  When  the  Emperor  acting  as 
high  priest  performs  certain  rites  he  is  called  Father- 
Mother  of  the  people.  Woman  is  endowed  with  the 
same  political  powers  as  man.42  The  wife  presides 
like  her  husband  at  family  councils,  trials,  etc.  As 
Regent,  she  governs  the  Empire  with  wisdom,  digni- 
ty, power,  as  was  shown  during  the  co-regency  of  the 
Empresses  of  the  East  and  of  the  West,  their  power 
continuing  even  after  the  promotion  of  a  boy-heir  to 
the  throne. 

to.  According  to  Commissioner  of  Education,  Chang  Lai  Sin,  Chinese 
women  can  read  and  write,  and  when  a  husband  wishes  to  do  anything  he  con- 
sults with  his  wife,  and  when  the  son  comes  home,  although  he  may  be  prime 
minister,  he  shows  his  respect  to  his  mother  by  bending  his  knee.  "I  claim  that 
the  Chinese  institutions  and  system  of  education,  both  with  regard  to  men  and 
women,  are  far  superier  to  those  of  any  of  the  neighboring  nations  for  a  great 
many  centuries,  and  that  it  is  only  within  this  century  that  China,  after  having 
been  defeated  by  so  many  reverses  in  her  arms,  has  turned  to  a  foreign  country 
— to  the  United  States— for  example  and  instruction." 

41.  The  Shakers  hold  that  the  revelation  of  God  is  progressive.  That  in  the 
first  or  antediluvian  period  of  human  nature  God  was  known  only  as  a  Great 
Spirit;  that  in  the  second  or  Jewish  period  he  was  revealed  as  the  Jehovah. 
He,  she  or  a  dual  being,  male  or  female,  the  "I  am  that  I  am;"  that  Jesus  in  the 
third  cycle  made  God  known  as  a  father;  and  that  in  the  last  cycle  commencing 
with  1770,  A.  D.,  "God  is  revealed  in  the  character  of  Mother,  an  eternal  Mother, 
the  bearing  spirit  of  all  the  creation  of  God."—  W.  A.  Parcelle. 

42.  In  China  the  family  acting  through  its  natural  representative  is  the  politi- 
cal unit.  This  representative  may  be  a  woman.  The  only  body  in  China  that 
may  be  said  to  correspond  with  our  law-making  assemblies  is  the  Academy  of 
Science  and  Letters  of  Pekin,  and  women  are  not  excluded  from  that  learned 
conclave.    La  Citi  Chinoise. — G.  Eugene  Simon. 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  41 

A  Thibetan  woman  empire  extant  between  the  VI 
and  VII  centuries  A.  D.  is  spoken  of  by  Chinese 
writers.  An  English  author,  Cooper,  seems  to  have 
visited  this  region,  meeting  with  an  amusing  venture 
while  there. *s 

Under  the  law  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  founded  A.  U. 
C.  300,  woman  possessed  the  right  of  repudiation  in 
marriage.  The  code  itself  was  ascribed  to  a  woman  of 
that  primitive  Athens  founded  and  governed  by 
women  long  years  previous  to  the  date  of  modern 
Athens.  The  change  in  woman's  condition  for  the 
worse  under  Christianity  is  very  remarkable  and  every- 
where it  is  noticed.  Among  the  Finns,  before  their 
conversion,  the  mother  of  a  family  took  precedence 
of  the  father  in  the  rites  of  domestic  worship.  Un- 
der the  Angles,  a  wound  inflicted  upon  a  virgin  was 
punished  with  double  the  penalty  of  the  same  injury 
inflicted  upon  a  man,  remarkable  as  showing  the  high 
esteem  and  reverence  in  which  women  were  held. 
Before  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  the  Germans 
bound  themselves  to  chastity  in  the  marriage  relation; 
under  Catholicism  the  wife  is  required  to  promise  the 
devotion  of  her  body  to  the  marital  rite.  German 
women  served  as  priestesses  of  Hertha,  and  during 
the  time  of  Rome's  greatest  power,  Wala  or  Valleda, — 
this  title  being  significative  of  a  supremely  wise 
woman,  a  prophetess, — was  virtual  ruler  of  the  German- 
ic forces;  Druses  when  about  invading  Germany  was 
repelled  by  her  simple  command  to  "Go  Back."  But 
under  Christianity  the  German  woman  no  longer  takes 
part  in  public  affairs,  education  is  denied,  the  most 
severe  and  degrading  labor  of  field,  streets  and  mine 
falls  upon  her,  while  in  the  family  she  is  serf  to  father, 
brother,  husband. 

43,  Art  Letters,  p.  322.— Bachofen. 


42  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

The  women  of  ancient  Scandinavia  were  treated 
with  infinite  respect;  breach  of  marriage  promise  was 
classed  with  perjury;  its  penalty  was  outlawry.  Mar- 
riage was  regarded  as  sacred  and  in  many  instances  the 
husband  was  obliged  to  submit  to  the  wife.4*  Those 
old  Berserkers  reverenced  their  Alruna,  or  Holy 
Women,  on  earth  and  worshiped  goddesses  in  heaven, 
where,  according  to  Scandinavian  belief,  gods  and 
goddesses  sat  together  in  a  hall  without  distinction 
of  sex. 

The  whole  ancient  world  recognized  a  female  priest- 
hood, some  peoples,  like  the  Roman,  making  national 
safety  dependent  upon  their  ministration;  others  as 
in  Egypt,  according  them  pre-eminence  in  the  priestly 
office,  reverencing  goddesses  as  superior  to  gods;  still 
other  as  the  Scandinavians,  making  no  distinction  in 
equality  between  gods  and  goddesses;  others  govern- 
ing the  nation's  course  through  oracles  which  fell  from 
feminine  lips;  still  others  looking  to  the  Sibylline 
Books  for  like  decision.46  Those  historians  anx- 
ious to  give  most  credit  to  the  humanizing  effect  of 
Christianity  upon  woman  are  compelled  to  admit  her 
superiority  among  pagan  nations  before  the  advent  of 
this  religion.48 

44.  Journal  of 'Jurisprudence,  Vol.  XVI,  Edinburgh,  1872. 

45.  The  divine  element,  according  to  the  idea  of  the  ancient  world,  was  com- 
posed of  two  sexes.  There  were  dei  Jcmma,  and  hence  temples  sacred  to  god- 
desses; holy  sanctuaries  where  were  celebrated  mysteries  in  which  men  could  not 
be  permitted  to  participate.  The  worship  of  goddesses  necessitated  priestesses, 
so  that  women  exercised  the  sacerdotal  office  in  the  ancient  world.  The  wives  of 
the  Roman  Consuls  even  offered  public  sacrifices  at  certain  festivals.  The 
more  property  the  wife  had,  the  more  rights  she  had. — M.  Derraimes. 

46.  The  superiority  of  woman's  condition  in  Europe  and  America  is  generally 
attributed  to  Christianity.  We  are  anxious  to  give  some  credit  to  that  influence, 
but  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  nations  of  Northern  Europe  treated  women 
with  delicacy  and  devotion  long  before  they  were  converted  to  the  Christian 
faith.  Long  before  the  Christian  era  women  were  held  in  high  estimation,  and 
enjoyed  as  many  privileges  as  they  generally  have  since  the  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity.   Nichols.—  Women  of  all  Nations. 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  43 

The  Patriarchate  under  which  Biblical  history  and 
Judaism  commenced,  was  a  rule  of  men  whose  lives  and 
religion  were  based  upon  passions  of  the  grossest 
kind,  showing  but  few  indications  of  softness  or  re- 
finement. Monogamous  family  life,  did  not  exist,  but 
a  polygamy  whose  primal  object  was  the  formation  of  a 
clan  possessing  hereditary  chiefs  ruling  aristocratically. 
To  this  end  the  dominion  of  man  over  woman  and 
the  birth  of  many  children  was  requisite.  To  this 
end  polygamy  was  instituted,  becoming  as  marked  a 
feature  of  the  Patriarchate  as  monogamy  was  of  the 
Matriarchate.  Not  until  the  Patriarchate  were  wives 
regarded  as  property,  the  sale  of  daughters  as  a  legiti- 
mate means  of  family  income,  or  their  destruction  at 
birth  looked  upon  as  a  justifiable  act.  Under  the 
Patriarchate,  society  became  morally  revolutionized,  the 
family,  the  state,  the  form  of  religion  entirely  chang- 
ed. The  theory  of  a  male  supreme  God  in  the  inter- 
ests of  force  and  authority,  wars,  family  discord,  the 
sacrifice  of  children  to  appease  the  wrath  of  an  offended 
(male)  deity  are  all  due  to  the  Patriarchate.  These 
were  practices  entirely  out  of  consonance  with  woman's 
thought  and  life.  Biblical  Abraham  binding  Isaac  for 
sacrifice  to  Jehovah,  carefully  kept  his  intentions  from 
the  mother  Sarah.  Jephtha  offering  up  his  daughter  in 
accordance  with  his  vow,  allowing  her  a  month's  life 
for  the  bewailment  of  her  virginity,  are  but  typical  of 
the  low  regard  of  woman  under  the  Patriarchate. 
During  this  period  the  destruction  of  girl  children  be- 
came a  widely  extended  practice,  and  infantile  girl 
murder  the  custom  of  many  nations.  During  the  Matri- 
archate all  life  was  regarded  as  holy;  even  the  sacri- 
fice of  animals  was  unknown.*7     The  most  ancient  and 

47.  When  I  go  back  to  the  most  remote  periods  of  antiquity  into  which  it  is 
possible  to  penetrate,  I  find  clear  and  positive-evidence  of  several  important  facts: 
First,  no  animal  food  was  eaten;  no  animals  were  sacrificed.  Higgins. — Ana- 
calypsit  II,  p.  147. 


44  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

purest  religions  taught  sacrifice  of  the  animal  passions 
as  the  great  necessity  in  self-purification.  But  the 
Patriarchate  subverted  this  sublime  teaching,  material- 
izing spiritual  truths,  and  substituting  the  sacrifice  of 
animals,  whose  blood  was  declared  a  sweet  smelling 
savor  to  the  Lord  of  Hosts. 

Both  infanticide  and  prostitution  with  all  their 
attendant  horrors  are  traceable  with  polygamy, — their 
origin— to  the  Patriarchate  or  Father-rule,  under  which 
Judaism  and  Christianity  rose  as  forms  of  religious  be- 
lief. Under  the  Patriarchate  woman  has  ever  been  re- 
garded as  a  slave  to  be  disposed  of  as  father,  husband 
or  brother  chose.  Even  in  the  most  Christian  lands, 
daughters  have  been  esteemed  valuable  only  in  pro- 
portion to  the  political  or  pecuniary  advantage  they 
brought  to  the  father,  in  the  legal  prostitution  of  an 
enforced  marriage.  The  sacrifice  of  woman  to  man's 
baser  passions  has  ever  been  the  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic of  the  Patriarchate.  But  woman's  degrada- 
tion is  not  the  normal  condition  of  humanity,  neither 
did  it  arise  from  a  settled  principle  of  evolution,  but  is 
a  retrogression,  due  to  the  grossly  material  state  of  the 
world  for  centuries  past,  in  which  it  has  lost  the  in- 
terior meaning  or  spiritual  significance  of  its  own 
most  holy  words. 

Jehovah  signifies  not  alone  the  masculine  and  the 
feminine  principles  but  also  the  spirit  or  vivifying  in- 
telligence. It  is  a  compound  word  indicative  of  the  three 
divine  principles.48  Holy  Ghost* although  in  Hebrew 
a  noun  of  either  gender,  masculine,  feminine,  neuter,  is 
invariably  rendered  masculine  by  Christian  translators 
of  the  Bible.49     In  the  Greek,  from  whence  we  obtain 

48.  Observe  that  I.  H.  U.  is  Jod,  male,  father;  "He"  is  female,  Binah,  and  U 
is  male,  Vau,  Son. — Sepher  Yetzirah. 

49.  The  Perfect  Way.— Kingsford. 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  45 

the  New  Testament,  spirit  is  of  the  feminine  gender, 
although  invariably  translated  masculine.  The 
double-sexed  word,  Jehovah,  too  sacred  to  be  spoken 
by  the  Jews,  signified  the  masculine-feminine  God.60 
The  proof  of  the  double  meaning  of  Jehovah,  the  mas- 
culine and  feminine  signification,  Father-Mother,  is 
undeniable.    Lanci,  one  of  the  great  orientalists,  says: 

Jehovah  should  be  read  from  left  to  right,  and  pro- 
nounced Ho-Hi;  that  is  to  say  He-She  (Hi  pronounc- 
ed He,)  Ho  in  Hebrew  being  the  masculine  pro- 
noun and  Hi  the  feminine.  Ho-Hi  therefore 
denotes  the  male  and  female  principles,  the  vis  gena- 
trix.hv 

Kingsford     says: 

The  arbitrary  and  harsh  aspect  under  which 
Jehovah  is  chiefly  presented  in  the  Hebrew  Script- 
ures is  due  not  to  any  lack  of  the  feminine 
element  either  in  His  name  or  in  His  nature,  or 
to  any  failure  on  the  part  of  the  inspired  leaders  of 
Israel  to  recognize  their  equality,  but  to  the  rudimen- 
tary condition  of  the  people  at  large,  and  their  con- 
sequent amenability  to  the  delineation  of  the  stern  side 
only   of     the    Divine    Character.62 

The  Hebrew  word  'El  Shaddai,'  translated,  'The 
Almighty',  is  still  more  distinctively  feminine  than 
Iah,  as  it  means  'The  Breasted  God/  and  is  made 
use  of  in  the  Old  Testament  whenever  the  especially 
feminine  characteristics  of  God  are  meant  to  be  indi- 
cated.68 

50.  I.  A.  H.  according  to  the  Kabbalists,  is  I.  (Father)  and  A.  H.  (Mother);  com- 
posed of  I.  the  male,  and  H.  the  mother.  Nork. — BibL  Mythol.  /,  164-65  (note  to 
Sod  166,  2,  354.) 

51.  Nork  says  the  "Worn  an  clothed  with  the  sign  of  the  Sun  and  the  Moon  is 
the  bi-sexed  or  male-female  deity;  hence  her  name  is  Iah,  composed  of  the 
masculine  I  and  the  feminine  Ah.    Sod. — Appendix  123. 

52.  The  Perfect  Way,  p.  78. 

53.  That  name  of  Deity,  which  occurring  in  the  Old  Testament  is  translated 
the  Almighty,  namely  El  Shaddai,  signified  the  Breasted  God,  and  is  used  when 
the  mode  of  the  divine  nature  implied  is  of  a  feminine  character.  Kingsford. — 
The  Perfect  Way,  p.  68. 


46  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

The  story  of  the  building  of  the  tower  of  Babel 
and  the  subsequent  confusion  of  language  possesses 
deep  interior  significance  ;  the  word  (Babel)  meaning 
'God  the  Father'  as  distinct  and  separate  from  the 
feminine  principle.  The  confusion  which  has  come 
upon  humanity  because  of  this  separation  has  been 
far  more  lamentable  in  its  results  than  a  mere  confound- 
ing of  tongues.6*  In  the  earliest  religions  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  feminine  principle  in  the  divinity  is  every- 
where found.  "I  am  the  Father  and  Mother  of  the 
Universe"  said  Krishna  in  the  Bhagavad  Gita. 

An  Orphic  hymn  says  :  "  Zeus  is  the  first  and  the 
last,  the  head  and  the  extremities  ;  from  him  have 
proceeded  all  things.  He  is  a  man  and  an  immortal 
nymph  i.  e.  the  male  and  female  element.  The  Sohar 
declares  "the  ancient  of  the  ancient  has  a  form 
and  has  no  form." 

The  Holy  Spirit,  symbolized  by  a  dove,  is  a  dis- 
tinctively feminine  principle — the  Comforter — and  yet 
has  ever  been  treated  by  the  Christian  Church  as  mas- 
culine, alike  in  dogmas  propounded  from  the  pulpit, 
and  in  translations  of  the  Scriptures.  A  few  notable 
exceptions  however  appear  at  an  early  date.  Origen 
expressly  referred  to  the  Holy  Ghost  as  feminine,  say- 
ing: "The  soul  is  maiden  to  her  mistress  the  Holy 
Ghost".  An  article  upon  the  "Esoteric  character  of 
the  Gospels"  in  Madam  Blavatsky's  "Lucifer"  (Novem- 
ber 1887)  says: 

Spirit    or  the    Holy  Ghost  was    feminine  with    the 

54.  A  chief  signification  of  the  word  Babel  among  Orientals  was  "God  the 
Father."  The  Tower  of  Babel  therefore  signifies  the  Tower  of  God  the  Father— 
a  remarkable  indication  of  the  confusion,  not  alone  of  tongues,  but  of  religious 
ideas  arising  from  man's  attempt  to  worship  the  father  alone. — E.  L.  Mason, 

Injustice  to  the  sex  reached  its  culmination  in  the  enthronement  of  a  persona* 
God  with  a  Son  to  share  his  glory,  but  wifeless,  motherless,  daughterless. — Dr. 
William  Henry  Channing. 


THE    MATRIARCHATE  47 

Jews  as  most  ancient  peoples  and  it  was  so  with  the 
early  Christians;  Sophia  of  the  Gnostics  and  the  third 
Sephiroth,  Binah  (the  female  Jehovah  of  the  Cabal- 
ists,)  are  feminine  principles  "Divine  Spirit"  or  Ruach, 
"One  is  She  the  spirit  of  the  Elohim  of  Life,"  is 
said  in  Sepher  Yetzirah.65 

An  early  canonical  book  of  the  New  Testament 
known  as  "The  Everlasting  Gospel"  also  as  "The  Gos- 
pel of  the  Holy  Ghost"  represents  Jesus  as  saying. 
"My  mother  the  Holy  Ghost,  took  me  by  the  hair  of 
my  head  up  into  a   mountain." 

The  word  sacred  simply  meaning  secret,  having  its 
origin  as  shown  at  the  time  when  knowledge  was  kept 
hidden  from  the  bulk  of  mankind,  only  to  be  acquired  by 
initiation  in  the  mysteries,so  also  the  word  'holy'  simply 
means  whole,  that  is,  undivided.  In  its  ignorance,  unwis- 
dom, and  fear  of  investigation,  mankind  has  allowed  a 

55.  Those  who  have  studied  the  ancient  lore  of  Cabalistic  books,  know  that  in 
the  ineffable  name  Yod-he-vau  (or  Jehovah),  the  first  letter  yod  signifies  the  mas- 
culine, the  second  letter  hu  or  ha  the  feminine,  while  the  last  letter  vau  or  vaud 
is  said  by  Cabalists  to  indicate  the  vital  life  which  fills  all  the  throbbing  universe 
from  the  union  of  eternal  love  with  eternal  wisdom.  It  is  this  ineffable  holy  (or 
whole)  Mother  and  Father,  which  must  be  exalted  and  imaged  forth  in  family  and 
government  with  the  woman-force  more  strongly  emphasized,  before  even  human 
society  can  be  filled  with  that  new  creation  with  which  the  iridescent  subtle 
mother-essence  infuses  and  enwreathes  all  other  realms  of  the  pulsing  universe. 

No  man  seems  shaken  at  hearing  of  the  fatherhood  of  Jehovah.  Is  mother- 
hood less  divine?  Nothing  but  a  male-born  theology  evolved  from  the  over- 
heated fires  of  feeling  would  have  burned  away  all  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
the  presence  of  the  "  Eternal  Womanly  "  in  Yod-he-vau's  being  is  necessary  to 
full-sphered  perfection ;  none  but  those  whose  degraded  estimate  of  woman  has 
caused  them  to  desecrate  her  holy  omce  of  high  priestess  of  life,  will  see  any- 
thing more  sacrilegious  in  a  recognition  of  "Our  Mother  in  Heaven,"  and  in 
offering  her  the  prayer  "hallowed  be  thy  name,  thy  will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is 
in  heaven,"  than  in  saying  the  same  things  to  the  Father  there. 

Those  who  chose  to  search  will  discover  that  the  "Eternal  Fatherhood  of  God," 
in  regard  to  which  Protestant  theologians  talk  so  much,  has  been  balanced  in  all 
ancient  religions  as  well  as  in  the  nature  of  things  by  the  eternal  Motherhood  in 
Jehovah's  being,  without  which  Fatherhood  would  be  impossible.  This  Mother- 
hood has  always  and  everywhere  been  the  preserver  and  creator  of  the  omni- 
present life  of  all  kinds  which  fills  the  throbbing  universe.  Yod-he-vau's  Lost 
Name  can  never  be  hallowed  (made  whole)  without  the  Mother  is  there.  E.  L. 
Mason.— Tht  Lost  Name. 


48  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

division  of  the  two  divine  principles,  male  and  female, 
to  obtain  firm  hold  in  their  minds.  Prejudice,  which 
simply  means  prejudgment,  a  judgment  without  proof, 
has  long  ruled  mankind,  owing  chiefly  to  that  bondage 
of  the  will  inflicted  by  a  tyrannous  self-seeking  priest- 
hood. But  we  have  now  reached  a  period  in  history 
when  investigation  is  again  taking  the  place  of  blind  be- 
lief and  the  truth,  capable  of  making  man  free,  is  once 
more  offered.  It  is  through  a  recognition  of  the  divine 
element  of  motherhood  as  not  alone  inhering  in  the 
great  primal  source  of  life  but  as  extending  throughout 
all  creation,  that  it  will  become  possible  for  the 
world,  so  buried  in  darkness,  folly  and  superstition, 
'to  practice  justice  toward  woman.  Not  legislation 
but  education  will  bring  about  the  change;  not 
external  acts  but  internal  thought.  It  is  but  a  few 
years  since  the  acknowledgment  of  a  feminine  element 
even  in  plants  was  regarded  by  the  church  as  heretical. 
Yet  though  still  perceiving  but  partial  truth,  science 
now  declares  the  feminine  principle  to  inhere  in  plants, 
rocks,  gems,  and  even  in  the  minutest  atoms;  thus  in 
some  degree  recognizing  the  occult  axiom  "As  it  is 
above,  so  it  is  below." 


CHAPTER   II. 

CELIBACY. 

While  the  inferior  and  secondary  position  of 
woman  early  became  an  integral  portion  of  Christianity, 
its  fullest  efforts  are  seen  in  Church  teachings  regard- 
ing marriage.  Inasmuch  as  it  was  a  cardinal  doctrine 
that  the  fall  of  Adam  took  place  through  his  tempta- 
tion into  marriage  by  Eve,  this  relation  was  regarded 
with  holy  horror  as  a  continuance  of  the  evil  which 
first  brought  sin  into  the  world,  depriving  man  of  his 
immortality.1  It  is  a  notable  fact  that  the  expected 
millennium  of  a  thousand  years  upon  earth  with  its 
material  joys  has  ever  had  more  attraction  for  Chris- 
tians than  the  eternal  spiritual  rapture  of  heaven. 
Many  of  the  old  Fathers  taught  that  "the  world  is  a 
state  of    matrimony,  but    paradise  of  virginity."8     To 

i.  It  was  a  favorite  doctrine  of  the  Christian  fathers  that  concupiscence  or  the 
sensual  passion  was  the  original  sin  of  human  nature.  Lecky.— Hist.  European 
Morals. 

The  tendency  of  the  church  towards  the  enforcement  of  celibacy  was  early 
seen.  At  the  four  Synods  which  assembled  to  establish  the  true  faith  in  respect 
to  the  Holy  nature  of  Christ's  Humanity,  the  first  one  at  Nice,  318,  the  second  at 
Constantinople  with  forty  bishops  present;  the  third  at  Ephesus  with  two  hun- 
dred bishops  present;  the  fourth  at  Chaledonia  with  many  bishops  together' 
they  forever  forbade  all  marriage  to  the  minister  at  the  altar.  Monumenta  Eccle- 
siastica. 

P.  347.  To  no  minister  at  the  altar  is  it  allowed  to  marry,  but  it  is  forbidd  en 
to  every  one.     Ibid. 

2.  According  to  Christianity  woman  is  the  unclean  one,  the  seducer  who 
brought  sin  into  the  world  and  caused  the  fall  of  man.  Consequently  all  apostles 
and  fathers  of  the  church  have  regarded  marriage  as  an  inevitable  evil  just  as 
prostitution  is  regarded  to-day.  August  Bebel.—  Woman  in  the  Past,  Present  and 
Future. 

49 


50  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

such  extent  was  this  doctrine  carried  it  was  declared 
that  had  it  not  have  been  for  the  fall,  God  would  have 
found  some  way  outside  of  this  relation  for  populating 
the  world,  consequently  marriage  was  regarded  as  a 
condition  of  peculiar  temptation  and  trial;  celibacy  as 
one  of  especial  holiness. 

The  androgynous  theory  of  primal  man  found  many 
supporters,  the  separation  into  two  beings  having  been 
brought  about  by  sensual  desiie.  Jacob  Boehme  and 
earlier  mystics  of  that  class  recognized  the  double 
sexuality  of  God  in  whose  image  man  was  made.  One 
of  the  most  revered  ancient  Scriptures,  "The  Gospel 
according  to  the  Hebrews,"  which  was  in  use  as  late 
as  the  second  century  of  the  Christian  era,  taught 
the  equality  of  the  feminine  in  the  Godhead;  also  that 
daughters  should  inherit  with  sons.  Thirty-three 
fragments  of  this  Gospel  have  recently  been  discov- 
ered. The  fact  remains  undeniable  that  at  the  advent 
of  Christ,  a  recognition  of  the  feminine  element  in 
the  divinity  had  not  entirely  died  out  from  general 
belief,  the  earliest  and  lost  books  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment teaching  this  doctrine,  the  whole  confirmed 
by  the  account  of  the  birth  and  baptism  of  Jesus, 
the  Holy  Spirit,8  the  feminine  creative  force,  playing 
the  most  important  part.  It  was  however  but  a 
short  period  before  the  church  through  Canons  and 
Decrees,  as  well  as  apostolic  and  private  teaching, 
denied  the  femininity  of  the  Divine  equally  with  the 
divinity  of  the  feminine.  There  is  however  abundant 
proof  that  even  under  but  partial  recognition  of  the 
feminine  principle  as   entering  in  the  divinity,  woman 

3.  Spirit  in  the  Hebrew,  as  shown  in  the  first  chapter,  answers  to  all  genders; 
in  the  Greek  to  the  feminine  alone.  With  Kabbalists  the  "Divine  Spirit"  was 
conceded  to  be  the  feminine  Jehovah,  that  is,  the  feminine  principle  of  the  God- 
head. 


CELIBACY  51 

was  officially  recognized  in  the  early  services  of  the 
church,  being  ordained  to  the  ministry, officiating  as 
deacons,  administering  the  act  of  baptism,  dispensing 
the  sacrament,  interpreting  doctrines  and  founding 
sects  which  received  their  names.4 

The  more  mystical  among  priests  taught  that  before 
woman  was  separated  from  man,  the  Elementals5  were 
accepted  by  man  as  his  children  and  endowed  by  him 
with  immortality,  but  at  the  separation  of  the  androgyn- 
ous body  into  the  two  beings  Adam  and  Eve,  the 
woman  through  accident  was  also  endowed  with  im- 
mortality which  theretofore  had  solely  inhered  in  the 
masculine  portion  of  the  double-sexed  being.  These 
mystics  also  taught  that  this  endowment  of  woman 
with  immortality  together  with  her  capability  of  bring- 
ing new  beings  into  existence  also  endowed  with  im- 
mortal life,  was  the  cause  of  intense  enmity  toward  her 
on  the  part  of  the  Elementals,  especially  shown  by  their 
bringing  suffering  and  danger  upon  her  at  this 
period. 

Still  another  class  recognizing  marriage  as  a  neces- 
sity for  the  continuance  of  the  species,  looked  upon  it 
with  more  favor,  attributing  the  fall  to  another  cause, 
yet  throwing  odium  upon  the  relation  by  maintaining 
that  the  marriage  of  Adam  and  Eve  did  not  take  place 
until  after  they  had  been  driven  from  Paradise.  This 
doctrine  was  taught  by  the  Father  Hieronymus6.      Thus 

4.  From  Marcellina,  in  the  second  century,  a  body  of  the  church  took  its 
name.  Her  life  was  pure,  and  her  memory  has  descended  to  us  free  from 
calumny  and  reproach. 

5.  Lowest  in  the  scale  of  being  are  those  invisible  creatures  called  by  Kabba- 
lists  the  "elementary."  *  *  The  second  class  is  composed  of  the  invisible 
antitypes  of  the  men  to  be  born.    Ms  Unveiled,  I,  310. 

6.  Who  maintained  that  Adam  did  not  think  of  celebrating  his  nuptials  till  he 
went  out  of  Paradise. 


52  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

with  strange  inconsistency  the  church  supported  two 
entirely  opposing  views  of  marriage.  Yet  even  those 
who  upheld  its  necessity  still  taught  woman's  com- 
plete subordination  to  man  in  that  relation;  also  that 
this  condition  was  one  of  great  tribulation  to  man, 
it  was  even  declared  that  God  caused  sleep  to  fall 
upon  Adam  at  the  creation  of  Eve  in  order  to  prevent 
his  opposition.7  Lecky  speaking  of  the  noxious  influ- 
ences of  ascetics  upon  marriage,  says  it  would  be 
difficult  to  conceive  anything  more  coarse  and  repul- 
sive than  the  manner  in  which  the  church  regarded 
it;  it  was  invariably  treated  as  a  consequence  of  the 
fall  of  Adam  and  regarded  from  its  lowest 
aspect.8  But  having  determined  that  evil 
was  necessary  in  order  to  future  good,  the  church 
decided  to  compel  a  belief  that  its  control  of  this  con- 
tract lessened  the  evil,  to  this  end  declaring  marriage 
illegal  without  priestly  sanction;  thus  creating  a  con- 
viction of  and  belief  in  its  sacramental  nature 
in  the  minds  of  the  people.  Despite  the  favoring 
views  of  a  class  regarding  marriage,  celibacy  was 
taught  as  the  highest  condition  for  both  man  and 
woman,  and  as  early  as  the  third  century  many  of  the 
latter  entered  upon  a  celibate  life,  Jerome  using  his 
influence  in  its  favor.  Augustine,  while  admitting 
the  possibility  of  salvation  to  the  married,  yet  speak- 
ing of  a  mother  and  daughter  in  heaven,  compared  the 
former  to  a  star  of  the  second  magnitude,  but  the  latter 
as  shining  with  great  brilliancy.  The  superior  re- 
spect   paid    to    the    celibates  even    among    women  is 

7.  It  was  the  effect  of  God's  goodness  to  man  that  suffered  him  to  sleep  when 
Eve  was  formed,  as  Adam  being  endowed  with  a  spirit  of  prophecy  might  foresee 
the  evils  which  the  production  of  Eve  would  cause  to  all  mankind,  so  that  God 
perhaps  cast  him  into  that  sleep  lest  he  should  oppose  the  creation  of  his  wife. 
Life  0/  Adam  by  I^redano.     Pub.  at  Amsterdam,  1696.     See  Bayle. 

8.  Lecky.—  Hist   European  Morals. 


CELIBACY  53 

attributed  to  direct  instruction  of  the  apostles.  The 
Apostolic  Constitutions'  held  even  by  the  Episcopal 
church  as  regulations  established  by  the  apostles 
themselves,  and  believed  to  be  among  the  earliest 
christian  records,  give  elaborate  directions  for  the  places 
of  all  who  attend  church,  the  unmarried  being  the  most 
honored.  The  virgins  and  widows  and  elder  women 
stood  or  sat  first  of  all. 

The  chief  respect  shown  by  the  early  fathers  towards 
marriage    was    that    it    gave    virgins    to    the    church, 
while    the    possibility    of     salvation    to    the    married, 
at    first    recognized,  was    denied  at    later  date  even  to 
persons    otherwise    living   holy    lives.      The    Emperor 
Jovinian  banished     a  man  who  asserted  the  possibility 
of  salvation  to  married  persons  provided  they    obeyed 
all  the  ordinances  of  the  church  and  lived  good   lives.9 
As  part  of  this  doctrine,  the  church  taught  that  woman 
was  under   an    especial    curse  and    man  a  divinely  ap. 
pointed  agent  for  the    enforcement   of    that  curse.      It 
inculcated  the  belief  that  all  restrictions    placed  upon 
her  were  but  parts  of    her  just    punishment  for  having 
caused  the  fall  of  man.     Under    such  teaching  a  belief 
in  the  supreme    virtue    of  celibacy — first  declared     by 
the  apostle  Paul, — was  firmly  established.   To   Augus- 
tine is  the  w  orld  indebted  for  full  development  of  the 
theory  of  original  sin,  promulgated  by    Paul  as    a  doc- 
trine of    the  Christian    Church  in  the  declaration  that 
Adam,  first  created,  was  not  first  in  sin.     Paul,  brought 
up  in  the  strictest  external  principles  of  Judaism,  did 
not    lose    his    educational    bias    or    primal    belief  when 
changing  from  Judaism   to  Christianity.10     Neither  was 
his   character   as    persecutor   changed  when   he  united 

9.  That  marriage  was  evil  was  taught  by  Jerome. 

10.  So  fully  retaining  it  as  to  require  the  circumcision  of  Timothy,  the  Gen- 
tile, before  sending  him  as  a  missionary  to  the  Jews. 


54  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

his  fortunes  with  the  new  religion.  He  gave  to  the 
Christian  world  a  lever  long  enough  to  reach  down 
through  eighteen  centuries,  all  that  time  moving  it  in 
opposition  to  a  belief  in  woman's  created  and  relig- 
ious equality  with  man,  to  her  right  of  private  judg- 
ment and  to  her  personal  freedom.  His  teaching  that 
Adam,  first  created,  was  not  first  in  sin,  divided  the  unity 
of  the  human  race  in  the  assumption  that  woman  was 
not  part  of  the  original  creative  idea  but  a  secondary 
thought,  an  inferior  being  brought  into  existence  as  an 
appendage  to  man. 

Although  based  upon  a  false  conception  of  the 
creative  power,  this  theory  found  ready  acceptance  in 
the  minds  of  the  men  of  the  new  church.  Not  illit- 
erate, having  received  instruction  at  the  feet  of  Gam- 
aliel, Paul  was  yet  intolerant  and  credulous,  nay  more, 
unscrupulous.  He  was  the  first  Jesuit  in  the  Christian 
church,  "Becoming  all  things  to  all  men."  The  Re. 
formed  church  with  strange  unanimity  has  chosen 
Paul  as  its  leader  and  the  accepted  exponent  of  its 
views.  He  may  justly  be  termed  the  Prostestant 
Pope,  and  although  even  among  Catholics  rivalling 
Peter  in  possession  of  the  heavenly  keys,  yet  the 
Church  of  Rome  has  accepted  his  authority  as  in  many 
respects  to  be  more  fully  obeyed  than  even  the  teach- 
ings of  St.  Peter.11  Having  been  accepted  by  the 
Church  as  the  apostolic  exponent  of  its  views  upon 
marriage,  it  was  but  to  be  expected  that  his  teachings 
should  be  received  as  divine.  That  Paul  wras  unmar- 
ried has  been  assumed  because  of  his  bitterness  against 
this  relation,  yet  abundant  proof  of  his  having  a  wife 
exists.     For  the  membership  of  the  Great  Sanhedrim, 

ii.  The  Council  of  Tours  (813)  recommended  bishops  to  read,  and  if  possible 
retain  by  heart,  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul. 


CELIBACY  55 

marriage  was  a  requisite.  St.  Clement  of  Alexandria 
positively  declared  that  St.  Paul  had  a  wife.  Until  the 
time  of  Cromwell,  when  it  was  burned,  a  MS.  letter 
of  St.  Ignatius  in  Greek  was  preserved  in  the  old 
Oxford  Library;  this  letter  spoke  of  "St.  Peter  and 
Paul  and  the  apostles  who  were  married."  Another 
letter  of  St.  Ignatius  is  still  extant  in  the  Vatican 
Library.  Tussian  and  others  who  have  seen  it  declare 
that  it  also  speaks  of  St.  Paul  as  a  married  man.12  But 
tenderness  toward  woman  does  not  appear  in  his  teach- 
ings; man  is  represented  as  the  master,  "the  head"  of 
woman.  In  consonance  with  his  teaching,  responsi- 
bility has  been  denied  her  through  the  ages;  although 
the  Church  has  practically  held  her  amenable  for  the 
ruin  of  the  world,  prescribing  penance  and  hurling 
anathemas  against  her  whom  it  has  characterized  as 
the  "door  of  hell." 

At  a  synod  in  Winchester  in  the  eight  century,  St. 
Dunstan,  famed  for  his  hatred  of  women,  made  strenu- 
ous effort  to  enforce  celibate  life.  It  was  asserted  to 
be  so  highly  immoral  for  a  priest  to  marry,  that  even  a 
wooden  cross  had  audibly  declared  against  the  horrid 
practice.13  Although  in  the  third  century  marriage 
was  permitted  to  all  orders  of  the  clergy,14  yet  the 
very  ancient  "Gospel  of  the  Egyptians,"  endorsed  as 
canonical  by  Clement  of  Alexandria,  taught  celibacy. 
These  old    christian    theologians  found   the  nature  of 

12.  Although  Paul  "led  about"  other  "women"  saluting  "some  with  a  holy 
kiss." 

13.  964.  Notion  of  uncleanliness  attaching  to  sexual  relations  fostered  by  the 
church.     Herbert  Spencer. — Descriptive  Sociology,  England. 

14.  In  the  third  century  marriage  was  permitted  to  all  orders  and  ranks  of  the 
clergy.  Those,  however,  who  continued  in  a  state  of  celibacy,  obtained  by  this 
abstinence  a  higher  reputation  of  sanctity  and  virtue  than  others.  This  was 
owing  to  an  almost  general  persuasion  that  they  who  took  wives  were  of  all 
others  the  most  subject  to  the  influence  of  malignant  demons.— -Mosheim. 


56  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

woman  a  prolific  subject  of  discussion,  a  large  party 
classing  her  among  brutes  without  soul  or  reason.  As 
early  as  the  sixth  century  a  council  at  Macon  (585) 
fifty-nine  bishops  taking  part,  devoted  its  time  to  a 
discussion  of  this  question,  MDoes  woman  possess  a 
soul?"  Upon  one  side  it  was  argued  that  woman 
should  not  be  called  "homo;  "  upon  the  opposite  side 
that  she  should,  because,  first,  the  Scriptures  declared 
that  God  created  man,  male  and  female;  second,  that 
Jesus  Christ,  son  of  a  woman,  is  called  the  son  of  man. 
Christian  women  were  therefore  allowed  to  remain 
human  beings  in  the  eyes  of  the  clergy,  even  though 
considered  very  weak  and  bad  ones.  But  nearly  a 
thousand  years  after  this  decision  in  favor  of  the 
humanity  of  the  women  of  Christian  Europe,  it  was 
still  contended  that  the  women  of  newly  discovered 
America  belonged  to  the  brute  creation,  possessing 
neither  souls  nor  reason.16  As  late  as  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century  an  anonymous  work  appeared,  argu 
ing  that  women  were  no  part  of  mankind,  but  a  spe- 
cies of  intermediate  animal  between  the  human  and 
the  brute  creation.  (Mulieres  non  est  homines,  etc:) 
Mediaeval  christian  writings  show  many  discussions 
upon  this  point,  the  influence  of  these  old  assertions 
still  manifesting  themselves. 

Until  time  of  Peter  the  Great,  women  were  not  rec- 
ognized as  human  beings  in  that  great  division  of 
Christendom  known  as  the  Greek  church,  the  census 
of    that    empire    counting    only    males,    or    so    many 

15.  Old  (Christian)  theologians  for  a  long  time  disputed  upon  the  nature  of 
females;  a  numerous  party  classed  them  among  the  brutes  having  neither  soul 
nor  reason.  They  called  a  council  to  arrest  the  progress  of  this  heresy.  It  was 
contended  that  the  women  of  Peru  and  other  countries  of  America  were  without 
soul  and  reason.  The  first  Christians  made  a  distinction  between  men  and 
women.  Catholics  would  not  permit  them  to  sing  in  Church.  Dictionaire  Fiodab 
Paris,  1819. 


CELIBACY  57 

"souls" — no  woman  named.  Traces  of  this  old  belief 
have  not  been  found  wanting  in  our  own  country 
within  the  century.  As  late  as  the  Woman's^Rights 
Convention  in  Philadelphia,  1854,  an  objector  in  the 
audience  cried  out:  "Let  women  first  prove  they  have 
souls;    both  the  Church  and  the  State  deny  it." 

Everything  connected  with  woman  was  held  to  be 
unclean.  It  is  stated  that  Agathro  desired  the  Sophist 
Herodes  to  get  ready  for  him  the  next  morning  a  ves- 
sel full  of  pure  milk,  that  is  to  say  which  had  not 
been  milked  by  the  hand  of  a  woman.  But  he  per- 
ceived as  soon  as  it  was  offered  to  him  that  it  was  not 
such  as  he  desired,  protesting  that  the  scent  of  her 
hands  who  had  milked  it  offended  his  nostrils.  In  the 
oldest  European  churches  great  distinction  was  made 
between  the  purity  of  man  and  woman.  At  an  early 
date  woman  was  forbidden  to  receive  the  Eucharist 
into  her  naked  hand  on  account  of  her  impurity,18  or 
to  sing  in  church  on  account  of  her  inherent  wicked- 
ness. To  such  an  extent  was  this  opposition  carried, 
that  the  church  of  the  middle  ages  did  not  hesitate  to 
provide  itself  with  eunuchs  in  order  to  supply  cathe- 
dral choirs  with  the  soprano  tones  inhering  by  nature 
in  woman  alone.  One  of  the  principal  charges  against 
the  Huguenots  was  that  they  permitted  women  to  sing 
in  church,  using  their  voices  in  praise  of  God  con- 
trary to  the  express  command  of  St.  Paul,  Catherine 
de  Medicis  reproaching  them  for  this  great  sin.17   The 

16.  By  a  decree  of  the  Council  of  Auxerre  (A.  D.  578),  women  on  account  of 
their  impurity  were  forbidden  to  receive  the  sacrament  into  their  naked  hands. 

17.  Catherine  reproached  the  Protestants  with  this  impious  license  as  with  a 
great  crime.  "Les  femmes  chantant  aux  orgies  des  huguenots,  dit  Georges 
l'apotre;  apprenez  done,  pr£dicans,  que  saint  Paul  a  dit;  Mulieres  in  ecclesia6- 
taccant;  et  que  daus  le  chapitre  de  l'apocolypse  l'evoque  de  Thyathire  est 
menac6  de  la  damnation  pour  avoir  permis  a  une  femme  de  paries  a  l'eglise. 
See  Redavances  Seigneur. 


58  WOMAN,     CHURCH    AND    STATE 

massacre  at  St.  Bartholomew,  when  30,000  men, 
women  and  children  lost  their  lives,  and  the  entire 
destruction  of  many  families  of  purest  character  took 
place,  with  an  additional  great  loss  to  France  from 
the  self-imposed  banishment  of  hundreds  more,  may 
be  traced  to  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul  that  woman 
should  keep  silence  in  the  church.  This  doctrine  also 
crossed  the  ocean  with  the  Puritan  Fathers,  and  has 
appeared  in  America  under  many  forms.18 

The  Christianity  of  the  ages  teaching  the  existence 
of  a  superior  and  inferior  sex,  possessing  different 
rights  under  the  law  and  in  the  church,  it  has  been 
easy  to  bring  man  and  woman  under  accountability  to 
a  different  code  of  morals  For  this  double  code  the 
church  is  largely  indebted  to  the  subtle  and  acute 
Paul,  who  saw  in  the  new  religion  but  an  enlarged 
Judaism  that  should  give  prominence  to  Abraham  and 
his  seed  from  whom  Christ  claimed  descent.  His  con- 
version did  not  remove  his  old  Jewish  contempt  for 
woman,  as  shown  in  his  temple  service,  the  law  for- 
bidding her  entrance  beyond  the  outer  court.  Nor 
could  he  divest  himself  of  the  spirit  of  the  old  morn- 
ing prayer  which  daily  led  each  Jew  to  thank  God  that 
he  was  not  born  a  heathen,  a  slave  or  a  woman. 

He  brought  into  the  new  dispensation  the  influence 
of  the  old  ceremonial  law,  which  regarded  woman  as 
unclean.  The  Jewish  exclusion  of  forty  days  from 
even  the  outer  court  of  the  sanctuary  to  the  woman 
who  had  given  birth  to  a  son,  and  of  twice  that  period, 
or  eighty  days,  if  a  daughter  had  been  born,  was    ter- 

18.  When  part  singing  was  first  introduced  into  the  United  States,  great  ob- 
jection was  made  to  women  taking  the  soprano  or  leading  part,  which  by  virtue 
of  his  superiority  it  was  declared  belonged  to  man.  Therefore  woman  was  rele- 
gated to  the  bass  or  tenor  but  nature  proved  too  powerful,  and  man  was 
eventually  compelled  to  take  bass  or  tenor  as  his  part,  while  woman  carried  the 
soprano,  says  the  History  of  Music, 


CELIBACY  59 

minated  in  both  religions  by  a  sin-offering  in  expia- 
tion of  the  mother's  crime  for  having,  at  the  peril  of 
her  own,  brought  another  human  being  into  life.19 
This  Old  Testament  teaching  degraded  the  life-giving 
principle  exemplified  in  motherhood,  and  in  a  two- 
fold way  lessened  the  nation's  regard  for  womanhood. 
First,  through  the  sin-offering  and  purification  de- 
manded of  the  mother;  second,  by  its  doubling  the 
period  of  exclusion  from  the  temple  in  case  a  girl  was 
given  to  the  world.20  The  birth  of  girls  even  under 
Christianity  has  everywhere  been  looked  upon  as  an 
infliction,  and  thousands  have  been  immured  in  con- 
vents, there  to  die  of  despair  or  to  linger  through 
years,81  the  victim  alike  of  father  and  of  priest. 

The  influence  of  Judaism  extended  through  Chris- 
tendom. The  custom  of  purification  after  maternity 
inherited  by  the  church  from  Judaism  brought  with  it 
into  Christianity  the  same  double  restriction  and  chas- 
tening of  the  mother  in  case  her  infant  proved    a  girl, 

19.  Leviticus  12:1s. 

Dr.  Smith  characterizes  a  sin-offering  as  a  sacrifice  made  with  the  idea  of 
propitiation  and  atonement;  its  central  idea,  that  of  expiation,  representing  a 
broken  covenant  between  God  and  the  offender;  that  while  death  was  deserved, 
the  substitute  was  accepted  in  lieu  of  the  criminal. — Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 

20.  The  Talmud  (Mishna),  declared  three  cleansings  were  accessary  for  lep- 
rosy and  three  for  children,  thus  placing  the  bringing  of  an  immortal  being  into 
life  upon  the  same  plane  of  defilement  with  the  most  hideous  plague  of  antiquity. 

21.  The  mean  term  of  life  for  these  wretched  girls  under  religious  confinement 
in  a  nunnery  was  about  ten  years.  From  the  fifteenth  century  a  sickness  was 
common,  known   as  Disease  of  the  Cloisters.     It  was  described  by  Carmen. 

Jewish  contempt  of  the  feminine  was  not  alone  exhibited  in  prohibiting  her 
entrance  into  the  holy  places  of  the  temple,  and  in  the  ceremonies  of  her  purifica- 
tion, but  also  in  the  especial  holiness  of  male  animals  which  alone  were  used  for 
sacrifice.  Under  Jewish  law  the  sons  alone  inherited,  the  elder  receiving  a 
double  portion  as  the  beginning  of  his  father's  strength.  See  Deut  21-15.  If  per- 
chance the  mother  also  possessed  an  inheritance  that  was  also  divided  among 
the  sons  to  the  exclusion  of  daughters.  The  modern  English  law  of  primogeniture 
is  traceable  to  Judaism. 

Even  the  commandments  were  made  subservient  to  masculine  ideas,  the  tenth 
classing  a  man's  wife  with  his  cattle  and  slaves,  while  the  penalties  of  the 
seventh  were  usually  visited  upon  her  alone. 


60  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

a  gift  as  propitiation  or  expiation  being  required. 
Uncleanliness  was  attributed  to  woman  in  every 
function  of  her  being;  the  purification  of  the  Virgin 
Mary,  who  was  not  exempt,  when  after  the  birth  of  a 
God,  being  used  as  an  incontrovertible  argument  in 
proof.  A  festival  of  the  purification  of  the  Virgin 
Mary,  adopted  from  paganism,  was  introduced  into 
Rome  at  an  early  date,  thus  perpetuating  a  belief  in 
the  uncleanliness  of  motherhood.  The  Church  in  the 
Roman  Empire  soon  united  with  the  State22  in  im- 
posing new  restrictions  upon  women.  Since  the 
Reformation  the  mother's  duty  of  expiation  has  been 
confirmed  by  the  Anglican  Church,  and  is  known  in 
England  as  "churching. "  Directions  as  to  the  woman's 
dress  at  this  time  was  early  made  the  subject  of  a 
canon.23  She  was  to  be  decently  appareled.  This 
term  "decently,"  variously  interpreted,  was  at  times 
the  occasion  of  serious  trouble.  In  1661,  during  the 
reign  of  James  I,  the  Chancellor  of  Norwich  ordered 
that  every  woman  who  came  to  be  churched  should 
be  covered  with  a  white  veil.  A  woman  who  refused 
to  conform  to  this  order  was  excommunicated  for  con- 
tempt. She  prayed  a  prohibition,  alleging  that  such 
order  was  not  warranted  by  any  custom  or  Canon  of 
the  Church  of  England.  The  judges  of  the  civil  court, 
finding  themselves  incompetent  to  decide  upon  such  a 
momentous  question,  requested  the  opinion  of  the 
archbishop  of  Canterbury.  Not  willing  to  trust  his 
own  judgment,  that  dignitary  convened  several 
bishops  for  consultation.      Their  decision  was  against 

22.  The  reign  of  Constantine  marks  the  epoch  of  the  transformation  of  Chris, 
tianity  from  a  religious  into  a  political  system.  Draper.— Conflict  of  Religion 
and  Science. 

23.  "The  woman  that  cometh  to  give  thanks  must  offer  accustomed  offering  in 
this  kingdom;  it  is  the  law  of  the  kingdom  in  such  cases." 


CELIBACY  6l 

the  woman,  this  Protestant  Council  upon  woman's 
dress  declaring  that  it  was  the  ancient  usage  of  the 
Church  of  England  for  women  who  were  to  be 
churched  to  come  veiled,  and  a  prohibition  was  de- 
nied. 

The  doctrine  that  woman  must  remain  covered 
when  in  the  sacred  church  building  shows  itself  in  the 
United  States.24  In  many  instances  under  Chris- 
tianity, woman  has  been  entirely  excluded  from  relig- 
ious houses  and  church  buildings.  When  Pope  Boni- 
face25 founded  the  abbey  of  Fulda  he  prohibited  the 
entrance  of  women  into  any  of  the  buildings,  even 
including  the  church.  This  rule  remained  unbroken 
during  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  and  even 
when  in  1131  the  Emperor  Lothair  went  to  Fulda  to 
celebrate  Pentecost,  his  empress  was  not  permitted  to 
witness  the  ceremonies.  When  Frederick  Barbarossa, 
1 135,  proposed  to  spend  his  Easter  there,  he  was  not 
even  allowed  to  enter  the  house  because  of  having  his 
wife  with  him.  In  1138  Boniface  IX,  at  the  request 
of  the  abbot,  John  Merlow,  relaxed  the  rule  and  per- 
mitted women  to  attend  the  services  of  the  church. 
Shortly  afterwards  the  building  was  destroyed  by  light- 
ning, which  was  looked  upon  as  evidence  of  the  divine 
displeasure  at  the  desecration.  The  monastery  of 
Athos    under    the    Greek    church,    situated    upon    an 

24.  In  the  year  1867  the  Right  Rev.  Bishop  Coxe,  of  the  Western  Diocese  of 
New  York,  refused  the  sacrament  to  those  women  patients  of  Dr.  Foster's  Sani. 
tarium  at  Clifton  Springs,  N.  Y.,  whose  heads  were  uncovered,  although  the  rite 
was  performed  in  the  domestic  chapel  of  that  institution  and  under  the  same  roof 
as  the  patient's  own  rooms. 

During  the  famous  See  trial  at  Newark.  N.  J.,  1876,  the  prosecutor,  Rev.  Dr. 
Craven,  declared  that  every  woman  before  him  wore  her  head  covered  in  token 
of  her  subordination. 

25.  The  Catholic  Congress  of  July,  1892,  telegraphing  the  pope  it  would  strive 
to  obtain  for  the  Holy  See  the  recovery  of  its  inalienable  prerogative  and  terri- 
torial independence,  was  convened  at  Fulda. 


62  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

island,  does  not  permit  the  entrance  of  a  female  animal 
upon  its  confines.  Even  in  America  woman  has  met 
similar  experience.28 

At  certain  periods  during  the  middle  ages,  conver- 
sation with  women  was  forbidden.  During  the  Black 
Death,  the  Flaggellants,  or  Brotherhood  of  the  Cross, 
were  under  such  interdict27.  In  this  last  decade  of  the 
XIX  century,  the  Catholic  church  still  imposes  simi- 
lar restrictions  upon  certain  religious  houses.  Early 
in  1892  the  queen-regent  of  Spain  visited  the  monas- 
tery of  Mirzaflores;  its  rules  not  allowing  a  monk  to 
speak  to  a  woman,  the  queen  was  received  in  silence. 
Her  majesty  immediately  telegraphed  to  the  pope 
asking  indulgence,  which  was  granted,  and  during  four 
hours  the  monks  were  permitted  the  sin  of  speaking 
to  a  woman.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  the  first  sen- 
tence uttered  by  one  of  the  monks  was  a  compliment 
upon  the  simplicity  of  her  majesty's  attire.  But  the 
most  impressive  evidence  of  the  contempt  of  the  church 
towards  all  things  feminine  was  shown  in  a  remark  by 
Tetzel  the  great  middle-age  dealer  in  indulgences. 
Offering  one  for  sale  he  declared  it  would  insure  eter- 
nal salvation  even  if  the  purchaser  had  committed 
rape  upon  the  mother  of  God.28 

A  knowledge  of  facts  like  these  is  necessary  in  order 
to  a  just  understanding  of  our  present  civilization, 
especially  as  to  the  origin  of  restrictive  legislation 
concerning  woman.     The  civilization  of  to-day  is  built 

26.  "In  the  old  days,  no  woman  was  allowed  to  put  her  foot  within  the  walls  of 
the  monastery  at  San  Augustin,  Mexico.  A  noble  lady  of  Spain,  wife  of  the 
reigning  Viceroy,  was  bent  on  visiting  it.  Nothing  could  stop  her,  and  in  she 
came.  But  she  found  only  empty  cloisters,  for  each  virtuous  monk  locked  himself 
securely  in  his  cell,  and  afterward  every  stone  in  the  floor  which  her  sacrilegious 
feet  had  touched  was  carefully  replaced  by  a  new  one  fresh  from  the  mountain 
top.    Times  are  sadly  changed.    The  house  has  now  been  turned  into  a  hotel." 

27.  Sacerdotal  Celibacy. — Lea. 

a8.  Studies  in  Church  History .—Lea, 


CELIBACY  63 

upon  the  religious  theories  of  the  middle  ages  sup- 
plemented by  advancing  freedom  of  thought.  Lea,  de- 
clares thus: 

The  Latin  church  is  the  great  fact  which  dominates 
the  history  of  modern  civilization.  All  other  agencies 
which  molded  the  destinies  of  Europe  were  compara- 
tively isolated  or  sparodic  in  their  manifestations. 

The  influence  of  church  teaching  is  most  strikingly 
manifested  in  the  thought  of  to-day.  Without  pre- 
determined intention  of  wrong  doing,  man  has  been 
so  molded  by  the  Church  doctrine  of  ages  and  the  co- 
ordinate laws  of  State  as  to  have  become  blind  to  the 
justice  of  woman's  demand  for  freedom  such  as  he 
possesses.  Nor  is  woman  herself  scarcely  less  bound, 
although  now  torn  by  the  spirit  of  rebellion  which 
burned  in  the  hearts  of  her  fore-mothers,  so  cruelly 
persecuted,  so  falsely  judged,  during  past  ages,  when 
the  most  devout  Christian  woman  possessed  no  rights 
in  the  church,  the  government  or  the  family.  The 
learning  which  had  been  hers  in  former  periods,  was 
then  interdicted  as  an  especial  element  of  evil.  Her 
property  rights  recognized  in  former  periods  then  de- 
nied; as  a  being  subordinate  to  man  she  was  not 
allowed  a  separate  estate  or  control  over  the  earnings 
of  her  own  hands.  Her  children  were  not  her  own 
but  those  of  a  master  for  whose  interest  or  pleasure 
she  had  given  them  birth.  Without  freedom  of 
thought  or  action,  trained  to  consider  herself  second- 
ary to  a  man,  a  being  who  came  into  the  world  not 
as  part  of  the  great  original  plan  of  creation  but  as  an 
afterthought  of  her  Creator,  and  this  doctrine  taught 
as  one  of  the  most  sacred  mysteries  of  religion  which 
to  doubt  was  to  insure  her  eternal  damnation,  it  is 
not  strange  that  the  great  body  of  women  are  not  now 
more    outspoken    in    demanding    equal    religious    and 


64  WOMAN,     CHURCH    AND    STATE 

governmental  rights  with  man.  But  another  phase 
of  heredity  shows  itself  in  the  eagerness  with  which 
women  enter  all  phases  of  public  life  which  does  not 
place  them  in  open  antagonism  with  Church  or 
State.  Education,  industries,  club  life  and  even  those 
great  modern  and  religious  organizations  which  bring 
them  before  the  public,  throwing  active  work  and 
responsibility  upon  them,  would  be  entirely  unexplain- 
able  were  it  not  for  the  tendency  of  inherited  thought 
to  ultimately  manifest  itself. 

The  long  continued  and  powerfully  repressing  in- 
fluence of  church  teaching  in  regard  to  the  created  in- 
feriority of  women,  imposed  upon  millions  of  men  and 
women  a  bondage  of  thought  and  action  which  even 
the  growing  civilization  of  the  nineteenth  century  has 
not  yet  been  able  to  cast  off.  To  this  doctrine  we 
can  trace  all  the  irregularities  which  for  many  centu- 
ries filled  the  church  with  shame;  practices  more 
obscene  than  those  of  Babylon  or  Corinth  dragged 
Christendom  to  a  darkness  blacker  than  the  night  of 
heathendom  in  the  most  pagan  countries— a  darkness 
so  intense  that  the  most  searching  efforts  of  the  his- 
torian but  now  and  then  cast  a  ray  of  light  upon  it;  — 
a  darkness  so  profound  that  in  Europe  from  the 
seventh  to  the  eleventh  centuries  no  individual 
thought  can  be  traced,  no  opinion  was  formed,  no 
heresy  arose.  All  Christendom  was  sunk  in  supersti- 
tion. Lange29says  "The  disappearance  of  ancient  civ- 
ilization in  the  early  centuries  of. the  Christian  era  is 
an  event  the  serious  problems  of  which  are  in  great 
part  still  unexplained."  Had  Lange  not  been  influenced 
by  the  subtle  current  of  heredity  which  unwittingly 
influenced  nations  and  systems  equally  with  individ- 
uals, he  could  easily  have  discovered  the  cause  of  this 

39,  History  of  Materialism. 


CELIBACY  65 

disappearance  of  olden  civilization,  to  be  in  the  degra- 
dation of  the  feminine  element  under  Christianity. 
While  this  darkness  of  Christian  Europe  was  so  great 
that  history  knows  less  of  it  a  thousand  years  since 
than  it  does  of  Egypt  5,000  years  ago,  one  corner  of 
that  continent  was  kept  luminous  by  the  brilliance  of 
Mohammedan  learning.  The  Arabs  alone  had  books 
from  the  eighth  to  the  thirteenth  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era.  The  Moors  of  Spain  kept  that  portion 
of  Europe  bright,  while  all  else  was  sunk  in  darkness. 
Universities  existed,  learning  was  fostered  and  women 
authors  were  numerous.  For  man}'  hundred  years 
Rome  possessed  no  books  but  missals  and  a  few 
Bibles  in  the  hands  of  priests.  Men  were  bound  by 
church  dogmas  looking  only  for  aggrandisement 
through  her.  The  arts  ceased  to  flourish,  science  de- 
cayed, learning  was  looked  upon  as  a  disgrace  to  a 
warrior,30  the  only  occupation  deemed  worthy  of  the 
noble. 

The  priesthood  who  alone  possessed  a  knowledge  of 
letters,  prostituted  their  learning  to  the  basest  uses; 
the  nobility  when  not  engaged  against  a  common  foe, 
spent  their  time  battling  against  each  other;  the  peas- 
antry were  by  turns  the  sport  and  victim  of  priest  and 
noble,  while  woman  was  the  prey  of  all.  Her  person 
and  her  rights  possessed  no  consideration  except  as 
she  could  be  made  to  advance  the  interest  or  serve 
the  pleasure  of  priest,  noble,  father,  husband;  some 
man-god  to  whose  lightest  desire  all  her  wishes  were 
made  to  bend.  The  most  pronounced  doctrine  of  the 
church  at  this  period  was  that  through  woman  sin 
had  entered  the  world;   that  woman's  whole  tendency 

30.  Seals  upon  legal  papers  owe  their  origin  to  the  custom  of  the  uneducated 
noble  warrior  stamping  the  imprint  of  his  clenched  or  mailed  hand  upon  wax  as 
nil  signature. 


66  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

was  towards  evil,  and  had  it  not  been  for  the  unfortu- 
nate oversight  of  her  creation,  man  would  then  be 
dwelling  in  the  paradisal  innocence  and  happiness 
of  Eden,  with  death  entirely  unknown.  When  the 
feminine  was  thus  wholly  proscribed,  the  night  of 
moral  and  spiritual  degradation  reached  its  greatest 
depth,  and  that  condition  ensued  which  has  alike 
been  the  wonder  and  the  despair  of  the  modern  his- 
torians, whose  greatest  fault,  as  Buckle  shows,  has 
been  the  reading  of  history  from  a  few  isolated  facts 
rather  than  building  up  its  philosophy  from  an  aggre- 
gation of  events  upon  many  different  planes. 

Under  all  restrictions  woman  did  not  fail  to  show 
her  innate  power  even  within  the  fold  of  the  church. 
She  founded  devout  orders,31  established  and  endowed 
religious  institutions,  and  issued  her  commands  to  the 
pope  himself,  in  more  than  one  instance  seating  that 
holy  personage  in  the  papal  chair.82  From  St.  Pau- 
lina, whose  life  was  written  by  St.  Jerome,  to  the 
promulgation  of  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception of  the  Virgin  Mary  by  the  Ecumenical  Council 
under  Pius  IX,  and  the  later  canonization  of  Joan  of 
Arc,  woman  has  not  failed  to  impress  even  the  Chris- 
tian world  with  a  sense  of  her  intellectual  and  spirit- 
ual power.  Yet  despite  the  very  great  influence  ex- 
erted by  so  many  women  in  the  affairs  of  the  church — 

31.  St.  Theresa  founded  the  Barefoot  Carmelites,  and  it  is  but  a  few  years  since 
thousands  of  its  members  assembled  to  do  honor  to  her  name. 

32.  The  annals  of  the  Church  of  Rome  give  us  the  history  of  that  celebrated 
prostitute  Marozia  of  the  tenth  century,  who  lived  in  public  concubinage  with 
Pope  Sergius  III.,  whom  she  had  raised  to  the  papal  throne.  Afterwards  she  and 
her  sister  Theodosia  placed  another  of  their  lovers,  under  name  of  Anastatius 
III  ,  and  after  him  John  X.,  in  the  same  position.  Still  later  this  same  powerful 
Marozia  placed  the  tiara  upon  the  head  of  her  son  by  Pope  Sergius  under  name  of 
John  XI.,  and  this  before  he  was  sixteen  years  of  age.  The  celebrated  Countess 
Matilda  exerted  no  less  power  over  popedom,  while  within  this  century  the  maid 
of  Kent  has  issued  orders  to  the  pope  himself. 


CELIBACY  67 

notwithstanding  the  canonization  of  so  many  women, 
she  has  only  been  able  to  show  her  capacity  at  an  im- 
mense expenditure  of  vital  force  against  constant 
priestly  opposition  and  the  powerful  decrees  of  coun- 
cils. Subtle  and  complex  as  are  the  influences  that 
mould  thought  and  character,  we  cannot  comprehend 
the  great  injustice  of  the  church  towards  woman  in  its 
teaching  of  her  mental  and  spiritual  inferiority  with- 
out a  slight  examination  of  the  great  religious  institu- 
tions that  have  been  under  her  charge.  Of  these 
none  possess  more  remarkable  history  than  the  Abbey 
of  Fontervault,33  founded  in  1099,  for  both  monks  and 
nuns.  It  belonged  in  the  general  rank  of  Benedictines, 
and  was  known  as  the  Order  of  Fontervault.  It  was 
ruled  by  an  abbess  under  title  of  General  of  the 
Order,  who  was  responsible  to  no  authority  but  that 
of  the  pope  himself.  Forming  a  long  succession  of 
able  women  in  thirty-two  abbesses  from  the  most  emi- 
nent families  of  France,  woman's  capacity  for  the 
management  of  both  ecclesiastical  and  civil  affairs  was 
there  shown  for  six  hundred  years.  It  was  the  abbess 
who  alone  decided  the  religious  fitness  of  either  monk 
or  nun  seeking  admission  to  the  order.  It  was  the 
abbess  who  decreed  all  ecclesiastical  and  civil  penal- 
ties; who  selected  the  confessors  for  the  different 
houses  of  the  order  throughout  France  and  Spain; 
who  managed  and  controlled  the  vast  wealth  belonging 
to  this  institution;  it  was  the  abbess  who  drew  up 
the    rules    for    the  government  of   the  order,  and  who 

33.  The  first  abbess,  Petrouville,  becoming  involved  in  a  dispute  with  the 
powerful  bishop  of  Angers,  summoned  him  before  the  council  of  Chateraroux  and 
Poicters,  where  she  pleaded  the  cause  of  her  order  and  won  her  case.  In  1349 
the  abbess  Theophegenie  denied  the  right  of  the  seneschal  of  Poiton  to  judge 
the  monks  of  Fontervault,  and  gained  it  for  herself.  In  1500,  Mary  of  Brittany, 
in  concert  with  the  pope's  deputies,  drew  up  with  an  unfaltering  hand  the  new 
statutes  of  the  order.     Legouvd.—  Moral  History  of  Women, 


68  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

also  successfully  defended  these  privileges  when 
attacked.84  For  neither  the  protection  of  the  pope, 
the  wealth  of  the  order,  or  the  family  influence  con- 
nected with  it,  prevented  priestly  attack, s*  and  no 
argument  in  favor  of  woman's  governing  ability  is 
stronger  than  the  fact  that  its  abbesses  ever  success- 
fully resisted  these  priestly  assaults  upon  the  privi- 
leges of  their  order.  The  abbey  of  Fontervault,  with 
its  grounds  of  forty  or  fifty  acres,  was  surrounded  by 
high  walls;  its  soil  was  tilled  by  the  monks  of  the 
abbey,  who  received  even  their  food  as  alms  from  the 
nuns,  returning  all  fragments  for  distribution  to  the 
poor."  The  authority  of  women  was  supreme  in  all 
monasteries  of  the  order.  The  ecclesiastical  power 
maintained  by  these  abbesses  is  the  more  remarkable, 
as  it  was  in  direct  contravention  of  the  dictates  of  the 
early  councils,  that  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  816,  forbidding 
abbesses  to  give  the  veil  or  take  upon  themselves  any 
priestly  function;  the  later  council  of  Paris,  A.  D. 
824,  bitterly  complained  that  women  served  at  the 
altar,  and  even  gave  to  people  the  body  and  blood  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

Among  the  convents  controlled  by  women,  which 
have  largely  influenced  religious  thought,  was  that  of 
the  Paraclete  in  the  12th  century  under  Heloise.  Its 
teachings  that  belief  was  dependent  upon  knowledge, 
attacked  the  primal  church  tenet,  that  belief  depends 
upon  faith  alone.  The  convent  of  Port  Royal  des 
Champs  during  the  17th  century  exerted  much  influ- 
ence. Its  abbess,  the  celebrated  Mother  Ange*lique 
Arnault,  was  inducted    into   this   office  in  her  eleventh 

34.  No  community  was  richer  or  more  influential,  yet  during  six  hundred 
years  and  under  thirty-two  abbesses,  every  one  of  its  privileges  were  attacked  by 
masculine  pride  or  violence,  and  every  one  maintained  by  the  vigor  of  the  women. 
— Sketches  of  Fonterr>ault. 

35.  What  is  more  remarkable  the  monks  of  this  convent  were  under  control  of 
the  abbess  and  nuns,  receiving  their  food  as  alms.—  Ibid, 


CELIBACY  69 

year  upon  death  of  her  abbess-aunt,  whose  co-adjutrix 
she  had  been.  This  convent,  both  in  person  of  the 
nuns  as  well  as  the  monks  connected  with  it,  became 
a  protest  against  the  Jesuitical  doctrine  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  like  the  Paraclete  is  intimately 
connected  with  reform  questions  in  the  Catholic 
Church.  Notwithstanding  such  evidences  of  woman's 
organizing  mind  and  governing  qualities  under  the 
most  favorable  conditions,  as  well  as  of  piety  so 
unquestioned  as  to  have  produced  a  long  calendar  of 
female  saints,  the  real  policy  of  the  church  remained 
unchanged;  nor  could  it  be  otherwise  from  its  basis  of 
woman's  created  inferiority  and  original  sin.  The 
denial  to  women  of  the  right  of  private  judgment  and 
the  control  of  her  own  actions,  the  constant  teaching 
of  her  greater  sinfulness  and  natural  impurity,  had  a 
very  depressing  effect  upon  the  majority  of  women 
whose  lowly  station  in  life  was  such  as  to  deprive 
them  of  that  independence  of  thought  and  action  pos- 
sible to  women  of  rank  and  wealth.  Then,  as  now, 
the  church  catered  to  the  possessors  of  money  and 
power;  then,  as  now,  seeking  to  unite  their  great 
forces  with  its  own  purpose  of  aggrandizement,  and 
thus  the  church  has  ever  obstructed  the  progress  of 
humanity,  delaying  civilization  and  condemning  the 
world  to  a  moral  barbarism  from  which  there  is  no 
escape  except  through  repudiation  of  its  teachings. 
To  the  theory  of  "God  the  Father,"  shorn  of  the 
divine  attribute  of  motherhood,  is  the  world  beholden 
for  its  most  degrading  beliefs,  its  most  infamous  prac- 
tices. Dependent  upon  and  identified  with  lost 
motherhood  is  the  "Lost  Name"  of  ancient  writers 
and  occultists.  When  the  femininity  of  the  divine  is 
once  again  acknowledged,  the  "  Lost  Name  "  will  be  dis- 


70  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

covered   and    the    holiness    (wholeness)  of  divinity  be 
manifested.*6 

As  the  theory  of  woman's  wickedness  gathered  force, 
her  representative  place  in  the  church  lessened.  From 
century  to  century  restrictive  canons  multiplied,  and 
the  clergy  constantly  grew  more  corrupt,  although 
bearing  bad  reputation  at  an  early  date.37  Tertullian, 
whose  heavy  diatribes  are  to  be  found  in  large  libraries, 
was  bitter  in  his  opposition  to  marriage.58  While  it 
took  many  hundreds  of  years  for  the  total  exclusion  of 
woman  from  the  christian  priesthood,  the  celibacy  of 
the  clergy  during  this  period  was  the  constant  effort 
of  the  Church.  Even  during  the  ages  that  priestly 
marriage  was  permitted,  celibates  obtained  a  higher 
reputation  for  sanctity  and  virtue  than  married  priests, 
who  infinitely  more  than  celibates  were  believed  sub- 
ject to  infestation  by  demons." 

The  restriction  upon  clerical  marriages  proceeded 
gradually.  First  the  superior  holiness  of  the  unmar- 
ried was  taught  together  with  their  greater  freedom 
from  infestation  by  demons.  A  single  marriage  only 
was    next    allowed,  and    that   with  a  woman  who  had 

36.  "The   Lord's  Prayer,"  taught  his  disciples  by  Jesus,  recognizes  the  loss, 
and  demands  restoration  of  the  feminine  in  "Hallowed  (whole)  be  Thy  Name." 

37.  Woman  should  always  be  clothed  in  mourning  and  rags,  that  the  eye  may 
perceive  in  her  only  a  penitent,  drowned  in  tears,  and  so  doing  for  the  sin  of  hav- 
ing ruined  the  whole  human  race.  Woman  is  the  gateway  of  satan,  who  broke 
the  seal  of  the  forbidden  tree  and  who  first  violated  the  divine  law. 

38.  Gildas,  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixth  century,  declared  the  clergy  were 
utterly  corrupt.     Lea. — Studies  in  Church  History. 

39.  In  the  third  century  marriage  was  permitted  to  all  ranks  and  orders  of  the 
clergy.  Those,  however,  who  continued  in  a  state  of  celibacy,  obtained  by  this 
abstinence  a  higher  reputation  of  sanctity  and  virtue  than  others.  This  was 
owing  to  the  almost  general  persuasion  that  they  who  took  wives  were  of  all 
others  the  most  subject  to  the  influence  of  malignant  demons. — Mosheim 

As  early  as  the  third  century,  says  BayU,  were  several  maidens  who  resolved 
never  to  marry. 


CELIBACY  71 

never  before  entered  the  relation.40  The  Council  of 
A.  D.  347,  consisting  of  twenty-one  bishops,  forbade 
the  ordination  of  those  priests  who  had  been  twice 
married  or  whose  wife  had  been  a  widow.*1  A  council 
of  A.  D.  395  ruled  that  a  bishop  who  had  children 
after  ordination  should  be  excluded  from  the  major 
orders.  The  Council  of  A.  D.  444,  deposed  Cheli- 
donius,  bishop  of  Besancon,  for  having  married  a 
widow.  The  Council  of  Orleans,  A.  D.  511,  consist- 
ing of  thirty-two  bishops,  decided  that  monks  who 
married  should  be  expelled  from  the  ecclesiastical 
order.  The  Church  was  termed  the  spouse  of  the 
priest.  It  was  declared  that  Peter  possessed  a  wife 
before  his  conversion,  but  that  he  forsook  her  and  all 
worldly  things  after  he  became  Christ's,  who  estab- 
lished chastity;  priests  were  termed  holy  in  proportion 
as  they  opposed  marriage.42  The  unmarried  among 
the  laity  who  had  never  entered  that  relation,  and  the 
married  who  forsook  it,  were  regarded  as  saintly.  So 
great  was  the  opposition  to  marriage  that  a  layman 
who  married  a  second  time  was  refused  benediction 
and  penance  imposed.48  A  wife  was  termed  "An  Un- 
hallowed Thing." 

40.  The  priests  of  the  Greek  Church  are  still  forbidden  a  second  marriage. 
In  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Edward  I,  when  men  in  orders  were  prohibited 
from  marriage  in  England,  a  statute  was  framed  under  which  lay  felons  were 
deprived  of  the  clergy  in  case  they  had  committed  bigamy  in  addition  to  their 
other  offenses;  bigamy  in  the  clerical  sense  meaning  marriage  with  a  widow  or 
with  two  maidens  in  succession. 

41.  Pelagius  II.,  sixty-fifth  pope  in  censuring  those  priests,  who  after  the 
death  of  their  wives  have  become  fathers  by  their  servants,  recommended  that 
the  culpable  females  should  be  immured  in  convents  to  perform  perpetual 
pennance  for  the  fault  of  the  priest.     Cormenin.—  History  of  the  Popes,  p.  84. 

42.  A  priest's  wife  is  nothing  but  a  snare  of  the  devil,  and  he  who  is  ensnared 
thereby  on  to  his  end  will  be  seized  fast  by  the  devil,  and  he  must  afterwards 
pass  into  the  hands  of  fiends  and  totally  perish.— Institutes  of  Polity,  Civil  and 
Ecclesiastical,   pp.   438-42.     Canons  of  Mlfric    and  /Elfric's  Pastoral  Epistles, 

P.  458. 

43.  Momumenta  Ecclesiastica,    Institute*  of  Polity,  Civil  and  Ecclesiastical. 


72  WOMAN.    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

So  far  from  celibacy  producing  chastity  or  purity  of 
life,  church  restrictions  upon  marriage  led  to  the  most 
debasing  crimes,  the  most  revolting  vices,  the  grossest 
immorality,  As  early  as  the  fourth  century  (370)  the 
state  attempted  purification  through  a  statute  enacted 
by  the  emperors  Valentinian,  Valerius  and  Gratian, 
prohibiting  ecclesiastics  and  monks  from  entering  the 
houses  of  widows,  single  women  living  alone,  or  girls 
who  had  lost  their  parents."  The  nearest  ties  of 
relationship  proved  ineffectual  in  protecting  woman 
from  priestly  assault,  and  incest  became  so  common  it 
was  found  necessary  to  prohibit  the  residence  of  a 
priest's  mother  or  sister  in  his  house.46  This  restric- 
tion was  renewed  at  various  times  through  the  ages. 
The  condemnation  of  the  Council  of  Rome,  Easter, 
1051,  under  the  pontificate  of  Pope  Leo  IX,  was  not 
directed  against  married  priests,  but  against  those  who 
held  incestuous  relations.  Yet  although  the  Church 
thus  externally  set  her  seal  of  disapprobation  upon 
this  vice,  her  general  teaching  sustained  it.  Gregory, 
bishop  of  Venelli,  convicted  of  this  crime  by  the 
Council  of  Rome,  was  punished  by  excommunication, 
but  in  a  short  time  was  restored  to  his  former  import- 
ant position.  The  highest  legates  were  equally  guilty 
with  the  inferior  priests.  Cardinal  John  of  Cremona, 
the  pope's  legate  to  the  Council  of  Westminster  1125, 

44.  In  order  to  understand  the  morals  of  the  clergy  of  this  period,  it  is  import- 
ant that  we  should  make  mention  of  a  law  which  was  passed  by  the  emperors 
Valentinian,  Valerius  and  Gratian  toward  the  end  of  the  year  370.  It  prohibited 
ecclesiastics  and  monks  from  entering  the  houses  of  widows  and  single  women 
living  alone  or  who  had  lost  their  parents.  Dr.  Cormenin.—  History  of  the  Popes, 
p.  62. 

45.  Lecky  finds  evidence  of  the  most  hideous  Immorality  in  these  restrictions, 
which  forbade  the  presence  even  of  a  mother  or  sister  in  a  priest's  house. 

/>rt  says  it  is  somewhat  significant  that  when  in  France  the  rule  of  celibacy 
was  completely  enforced  churchmen  should  find  it  necessary  to  revive  this 
hideously  suggestive  restriction  which  denied  the  priest  the  society  of  his 
mother  and  sister.— Sacerdotal  Celibacy,  p.  344. 


CELIBACY  73 

sent  by  Pope  Honorius  for  the  express  purpose  of  en- 
forcing celibacy,  became  publicly  notorious  and  dis- 
graced, and  was  obliged  to  hastily  leave  England  in 
consequence  of  his  teaching  and  his  practice  being 
diametrically  opposed.*8 

Through  this  clerical  contempt  of  marriage,  the 
conditions  of  celibacy  and  virginity  were  regarded  as 
of  the  highest  virtue.  Jerome  respected  marriage  as 
chiefly  valuable  in  that  it  gave  virgins  to  the  church, 
while  Augustus  in  acknowledging  that  marriage  perpet- 
uated the  species,  also  contended  that  it  also  perpetu- 
ated original  sin. 

These  diverse  views  in  regard  to  marriage  created  the 
most  opposite  teaching  from  the  church.  By  one  class 
the  demand  to  increase  and  multiply  was  constantly 
brought  up,  and  women  were  taught  that  the  rearing 
of  children  was  their  highest  duty.  The  strangest 
sermons  were  sometimes  preached  toward  the  enforce- 
ment of  this  command.  Others  taught  an  entirely 
different  duty  for  both  men  and  women,  and  a  large 
celibate  class  was  created  under  especial  authority  of 
the  church.  Women,  especially  those  of  wealth,  were 
constantly  urged  to  take  upon  themselves  the  vow  of 
virginity,  their  property  passing  into  possession  of  the 
church,  thus  helping  to  build  up  priestly  power.  An- 
other class  held  the  touch  of  a  woman  to  be  a  contam- 
ination, and  to  avoid  it  holy  men  secluded  themselves 
in   caves   and  forests.*7     Through   numerous   decretals 

46.  He  declared  it  to  be  the  highest  degree  of  wickedness  to  rise  from  a 
woman's  side  to  make  the  body  of  Christ.  He  was  discovered  the  same  night 
with  a  woman  to  the  great  indignation  of  the  people,  and  obliged  to  flee  the 
country  to  escape  condign  punishment. 

47.  It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  the  order  of  ideas  that  produced  that  passion- 
ate horror  of  the  fair  sex  which  is  such  a  striking  characteristic  of  old  Catholic 
theology.  Celibacy  was  universally  conceded  as  the  highest  form  of  virtue,  and 
in  order  to  make  it  acceptable  theologians  exhausted  all  the  resources  of  their 
eloquence  in  describing  the  iniquity  of  those  whose  charms  had  rendered  it  so 
rare.  Hence  the  long  and  fiery  disquisitions  on  the  unparalleled  malignity,  the 
unconceivable  subtlety,  the  frivolity,  the  unfaithfulness,  the  unconquerable  evil 
propensities  of  woman.    Lecky. — tiist.  European  Morals, 


74  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

confirmation  was  given  to  the  theory  that  woman  was 
defiled  through  the  physical  peculiarities  of  her  being. 
Even  her  beauty  was  counted  as  an  especial  snare  and 
temptation  of  the  devil  for  which  in  shame  she  ought 
to  do  continual  penance.48  St.  Chrysostom,  whose 
prayer  is  repeated  at  every  Sunday  morning  service  of 
the  Episcopal  church,  described  women  as  a  "necessary 
evil,  a  natural  temptation,  a  desirable  calamity,  a 
domestic  peril,  a  deadly  fascination,  and  a  painted  ill." 
But  to  escape  her  influence  was  impossible  and  celi- 
bacy led  to  the  most  direful  results.  Monks  and  her- 
mits acknowledged  themselves  tormented  in  their  sol- 
itary lives  by  visions  of  beautiful  women.  Monasteries 
were  visited  by  an  illness  to  which  celibacy  imparted 
a  name,49  and  impurity  of  body  and  soul  spread 
throughout  Christendom.  The  general  tone  of  the 
church  in  regard  to  marriage;  its  creation  of  a  double 
code  of  morality;  its  teaching  of  woman's  greater  sin- 
fulness, together  with  that  of  her  absolute  subordina- 
tion to  man,  subverted  the  moral  character  of  the 
Christian  world  within  whose  borders  the  vilest  sys- 
tems of  immorality  arose  which  the  world  has  ever 
known;  its  extent  being  a  subject  of  historical 
record.60 

48.  The  Fathers  of  the  Church  for  the  most  part,  vie  with  each  other  in  their 
depreciation  of  woman  and  denouncing  her  with  every  vile  epithet,  held  it  a  deg- 
radation for  a  saint  to  touch  even  his  aged  mother  with  his  hand  in  order  to  sus- 
tain her  feeble  steps.  •  •  •  For  it  declared  woman  unworthy  through  inherent 
impurity  even  to  set  foot  within  the  sanctuaries  of  its  temples;  suffered  her  to 
exercise  the  function  of  wife  and  mother  only  under  the  spell  of  a  triple  exorcism, 
and  denied  her  when  dead  burial  within  its  more  sacred  precincts  even  though 
she  was  an  abbess  of  undoubted  sanctity.  Anna  Kingsford. —  The  Perfect  Way, 
p.  286. 

49.  Disease  0/ the     Cloisters. 

50.  When  the  sailors  of  Columbus  returned  from  the  new  world  they  brought 
with  them  a  disease  of  an  unknown  character,  which  speedily  found  its  way  into 
every  part  of  Europe.  None  were  exempt;  the  king  on  his  throne,  the  beggar  in 
his  hovel,  noble  and  peasant,  priest  and  layman  alike  succumbed  to  the  dire  influ- 
ence which  made  Christendom  one  vast  charnel  house. 

Of  it,  Montesquieu  said:  "It  is  now  two  centuries  since  a  disease  unknown  to 
our  ancestors  was  first  transplanted  from  the  new  world  to  ours,  and  came  to 
attack  human  nature  in  the  very  source  of  life  and  pleasure.  Most  of  the  pow- 
erful families  of  the  South  of  Europe  were  seen  to  perish  by  a  distemper  that 
was  grown  too  common  to  be  ignominious,  and  was  considered  in  no  other  light 
tiian  that  of  being  fatal.     Works,  I,  265. 


CELIBACY  75 

According  to  the  teaching  of  men  who  for  many 
hundreds  of  years  were  molders  of  human  thought, 
priests,  philosophers  and  physicians  alike,  nature 
never  designed  to  procreate  woman,  her  intention  be- 
ing always  to  produce  men.  These  authorities  assert- 
ed that  nature  never  formed  the  feminine  except  when 
she  lost  her  true  function  and  so  produced  the  female 
sex  by  chance  or  accident.  Aristotle51  whose  philoso- 
phy was  accepted  by  the  church  and  all  teaching  of 
a  contrary  character  declared  heretical,  maintained 
that  nature  did  not  form  woman  except  when  by  rea- 
son of  imperfection  of  matter  she  could  not  obtain  the 
sex  which  is  perfect.  M  Cajetan  enunciated  the  same 
doctrine  many  hundred  years  later.  M  Aristotle  also 
denied  creative  power  to  the  mother.  M  While  through- 
out its  history  the  course  of  the  Christian  Church 
against  marriage  is  constantly  seen,  no  less  noticeable 
are  the  grossly  immoral  practices  resulting  from  celi- 
bacy. Scarcely  a  crime  or  a  vice  to  which  it  did  not 
give  birth.  Celibacy  was  fostered  in  the  interests  of 
power,  and  in  order  to  its  more  strict  enforcement 
barons  were  permitted  to  enslave  the  wives  and  child- 
ren of  married  priests.65  Those  of  Rome  were 
bestowed  upon  the  Cathedral  church  of  the  Lateran, 
and  bishops  throughout  Christendom  were  ordered  to 
enforce  this  law  in  their  own  dioceses  and  to  seize  the 

51.  St.  Ambrose  and  others  believed  not  that  they  (women)  were  human  creat- 
ures like  other  people.     Luther.—  Familiar  Discourses^  p.  383. 

5a.  When  a  woman  is  born  it  js  a  deficit  of  nature  and  contrary  to  her  inten- 
tions, as  is  the  case  when  a  person  is  born  blind  or  lame  or  with  any  natural 
defect,  and  as  we  frequently  see  happens  in  fruit  trees  which  never  ripen.  In 
like  manner  a  woman  may  be  called  a  fortuitous  animal  and  produced  by  acci- 
dent 

53.  Cajetan,  living  from  1496  to  1534,  became  General  of  the  Dominican  Order 
and  ofterwards  Cardinal. 

54.  "The  Father  alone  is  creator." 

55.  By  decree  of  the  Council  of  Lyons,  1042,  barons  were  allowed  to  enslave 
the  children  of  married  clergy. — Younge. 


76  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

wives  of  priests  for  the  benefit  of  their  churches.  At 
no  point  of  history  do  we  more  clearly  note  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Church  upon  the  State  than  in  the  union 
of  the  temporal  power  with  the  ecclesiastical  for  pur- 
poses of  constraining  priestly  celibacy. 

Under  reign  of  Philip  I  of  France,  a  council  was 
held  at  Troyes  which  condemned  the  marriage  of 
priests.6*  In  1108,  the  following  year,  King  Henry  I 
of  England57  summoned  a  council  to  assemble  in  Lon- 
don for  purpose  of  upholding  priestly  celibacy,  urging 
its  enforcement  upon  the  bishops,  and  pledging  his 
kingly  honor  in  aid.  A  new  series  of  canons  was  pro- 
mulgated, strengthened  by  severe  penalties  and  the 
co-operation  of  the  king.  Finding  it  impossible  either 
through  spiritual  or  temporal  power  to  compel  abso- 
lute celibacy  "the  king  for  the  benefit  of  his  exchequer 
established  a  license  for  concubinage  upon  the  pay- 
ment of  a  tax  known  as  cullagium.69 

Notwithstanding  all  the  powerful  enginery  of  fhe 
church,  priestly  celibacy,  so  contrary  to  nature,  was 
not  rendered  absolutely  imperative  until  the  thirteenth 
century.  The  Fourth  Lateran  Council,  (Twelfth 
Ecumenical),  1215,  under  pope  Innocent  III,  is  espec- 
ially famous  because  of  its  final  settlement  of  the  pol- 
icy of  the  church  in  regard  to  priestly  marriage.  This 
was  a  large  council,  1300  prelates  taking  part  in    the 

56.  In  1 108  priests  were  again  ordered  to  put  away  their  wives.  Such  as  kept 
them  and  presumptuously  celebrated  mass  were  to  be  excommunicated.  Even 
the  company  of  their  wives  was  to  be  avoided.  Monks  and  priests  who  for  love 
of  their  wives  left  their  orders  suffering  excommunication,  were  again  admitted 
after  forty  days  penance  if  afterwards  forsaking  them, 

57.  Dulaure.— Histoire  de  Paris,  I,  387,  note. 

58.  The  abbot  elect  of  St.  Augustine,  at  Canterbury,  in  1171,  was  found  on  in- 
i  vestigation  to  have  seventeen  illegitimate  children  in  a  single  village.     An  abbot 

of  St.  Pelayo,  in  Spain,  in  1130,  was  proved  to  have  kept  no  less  than  seventy 
mistresses. — Hist.  Europtan  Morals,  p.  350. 

59.  A  tax  called  "cullagium,"  which  was  a  license  to  clergymen  to  keep  con- 
,  was  during  several  years  systematically  levied  by  princes.— Ibid  a,  349. 


CELIBACY  77 

adjudication  of  this  question.  While  with  St.  Augus- 
tine acknowledging  that  marriage  was  requisite  for 
the  preservation  of  the  race,  it  strictly  confined  this 
relation  to  the  laity. 

The  subject  of  celibacy  as  we  see  had  agitated  the 
church  from  its  foundation.  A  more  renowned  coun- 
cil even  than  the  Twelfth  Ecumenical,  namely,  the 
First  Nicene  or  Second  Ecumenical,  having  seriously 
discussed  it,  although  after  prolonged  debate  pro- 
nouncing against  celibacy  and  in  favor  of  priestly  mar- 
riage. St.  Paphinutius,  the  martyr  bishop  of  Thebes, 
although  himself  a  celibate  advocated  marriage 
which  he  declared  to  be  true  chastity,  the  council 
adopting  his  opinion.  Although  the  tendency  of  the 
church  for  so  many  hundred  years  had  been  towards 
celibacy  yet  when  adopted  as  a  dogma,  a  belief  in  its 
propriety  or  its  scriptural  authority  was  by  no  means 
universal  even  among  the  most  eminent  members,  but 
in  no  instance  has  the  control  of  the  church  over  the 
consciences  and  will  of  its  adherents  been  more  forci- 
bly illustrated.  Many  illustrious  and  learned  theolo- 
gians as  Gratian  the  Canonist,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
and  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  Arch-Deacon  of  St.  Davids, 
while  thereafter  sustaining  celibacy  as  a  law  of  the 
church  declared  it  had  neither  scriptural  nor  apostolic 
warrant;  St.  Thomas  affirming  it  to  be  merely  a  law 
of  human  ecclesiastical  origin.60 

Absolute  celibacy  of  the  priesthood  proved  very 
difficult  of  enforcement.  At  the  great  council  of  Lon- 
don, 1237,  twenty-three  years  afterwards,  Cardinal 
Otto  deplored  the  fact  that  married  men  still  re- 
ceived holy  orders  and  held  office  in  the  church,  and 
in  1268  only  fifty-three  years   after   the    great   council 

60.  Supplement  to  Lumires,  50th  question,  Art.  III. 


78  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

confirming  celibacy  as  a  doctrine  of  the  church,  another 
great  council  was  convened  in  London,  when  Cardinal 
Legate  Ottoborn,  the  direct  representative  of  the 
Pope,  demanded  the  establishment  of  concubinage  for 
priests.  The  institutions  of  Otto  and  Ottoborn  long 
remained  the  law  of  the  English  church.  Yet  to  their 
honor  be  it  remembered  that  despite  council  and  car- 
dinal, pope  and  church,  there  were  priests  who  still 
persistently  refused  either  to  part  from  their  wives  or 
to  relinquish  their  priestly  functions,  and  who  when 
excommunicated  for  contumacy,  laughed  at  the  sen- 
tence and  continued  their  priestly  offices.61  Others 
sufficiently  conformed  to  the  edicts  to  lock  up  their 
churches  and  suspend  their  priestly  administrations, 
yet  refusing  to  part  with  their  wives.  The  relatives 
of  wives  also  exerted  their  influence  against  the  action 
of  the  church. 

The  struggle  was  bitter  and  long.  New  canons 
were  promulgated  and  celibacy  enforced  under  severe 
penalties,  or  rather  marriage  was  prohibited  under 
severe  penalties.  The  holy  robbery  which  made  slaves 
of  the  wives  and  children  of  priests  confiscating  their 
property  to  the  church,  had  more  effect  in  compelling 
celibacy  than  all  anathemas  upon  the  iniquity  of  mar- 
riage. Priests  who  retained  their  wives  preferring  the 
chastity  of  this  relation  to  the  license  allowed  celi- 
bates, were  prohibited  from  their  offices  and  their 
wives  denounced  as  harlots.  If  this  did  not  suffice, 
such  priests  were  finally  excommunicated.  But  a  way 
of  return  was  left  open.  In  case  this  measure  coerced 
them  into  abandoning  wives  and  children,  a  short 
penance  soon    restored  the    priestly  rank  with    all  its 

61.  St.  Anselm,  although  very  strict  in  the  enforcement  of  the  canons  favoring 
celibacy,  found  recalcitrant  priests  in  his  own  diocese  whose  course  he  charac- 
terized as  "bestial  insanity." 


CELIBACY  79 

attendant  dignities.  Nor  was  the  re-instated  priest 
compelled  to  live  purely.  So  little  was  it  expected 
that  the  tax  upon  concubinage  soon  became  a  com- 
ponent part  of  the  celibate  system.  So  gross  and 
broadspread  became  the  immorality  of  all  classes  that 
even  the  Head  of  the  Church  pandered  to  it  in  the 
erection  by  Pope  Sixtus  V.  of  a  magnificent  building 
devoted  to  illicit  pleasure.62 

The  example  of  Christ  himself  was  pointed  to  in 
favor  of  celibacy,  even  upon  the  cross  saying  to  his 
mother,  "Woman,  what  have  I  to  do  with  thee?" 
The  saints  of  the  Old  Testament  as  well  as  the  New, 
were  quoted  as  having  opposed  marriage.  Abel,  Mel- 
chisedeck,  Joshua,  Elias,  Jonah,  Daniel,  St  John  the 
Baptist,  St.  John  the  Evangelist,  St.  Paul  with  his 
disciples,  and  all  saintly  personages  were  declared  to 
have  been  celibates. 

A  concubinage  tax  was  exacted  from  all  the  clergy 
without  exception,  and  rendered  compulsory  even  upon 
those  priests  who  still  kept  their  wives,  or  who  lived 
chastely  outside  of  the  marital  relation.  Protests  were 
of  no  avail.  Those  whom  disinclination,  age  or  ill- 
health  kept  chaste,  were  told  the  privilege  of  unchastity 
was  open  to  them;  the  bishop  must  have  the  money 
and  after  payment  they  were  at  liberty  to  keep  concu- 
bines or   not.*3     Under    concubinage     the    priest    was 

62.  So  says  BayU,  author  of  the  Historical  and  Critical  Dictionary,  a  magnifi- 
cent work  in  many  volumes.  Bayle  was  a  man  of  whom  it  has  justly  been  said  his 
"profound  and  varied  knowledge  not  only  did  much  to  enlighten  the  age  in  which 
he  lived  by  pointing  out  the  errors  and  supplying  the  deficiencies  of  contempo- 
raneous writers  of  the  seventeenth  century,  but  down  to  the  present  time  his  work 
has  preserved  a  repository  of  facts  from  which  scholars  continually  draw." 

63.  Those  who  support  celibacy  would  perhaps  choose  rather  to  allow  crimes 
than  marriage,  because  they  derive  considerable  revenue  by  giving  license  to 
keep  concubines.  A  certain  prelate  boasted  openly  at  his  table  that  he  had  in 
his  diocese  1,000  priests  who  kept  concubines,  and  who  paid  him,  each  of  them,  a 
crown  a  year  for  their  license.— Cornelius  Aggrippa. 


8o  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

free  from  all  family  responsibility;  his  mistress  pos- 
sessed neither  present  nor  future  claim  upon  him; 
children,  who  according  to  church  teaching  followed 
the  condition  of  the  mother,  were  born  to  him,  but  for 
their  education  and  maintenance  neither  ecclesistical 
nor  civil  law  compelled  him  to  provide. 

For  many  centuries  this  immoral  tax  brought  enor- 
mous sums  into  the  treasuries  of  both  Church  and 
State.  Although  the  laws  against  the  marriage  of 
priests  were  enacted  on  pretense  of  the  greater  inher- 
ent wickedness  of  woman,  history  proves  their  chief 
object  to  have  been  the  keeping  of  all  priestly  pos- 
sessions under  church  control.  It  was  openly  asserted 
that  the  temporal  possessions  of  the  church  were  im- 
perilled by  sacerdotal  marriage,  and  it  has  been  de- 
clared with  every  proof  of  truthfulness  that  edicts 
against  the  marriage  of  priests  were  promulgated  to 
prevent  the  alienation  of  property  from  the  church.65 
The  saying  of  Paul  was  quoted;  "He  that  is  married 
careth  for  his  wife,  but  he  that  is  unmarried  for  the 
Lord."  Married  bishops  were  occasionally  confirmed 
in  their  sees  upon  condition  that  their  wives  and 
children  should  not  inherit  their  property,  which  upon 
their  death  should  fall  to  the  church. M 

The  struggle  against  the  absolute  celibacy  of  the  priest- 
hood was  bitter.  A  few  priests  still  kept  their 
benefices  while  retaining  their  wives  and  acknowledging 

64.  For  years  in  Germany  the  word  Pufferkind  signified  "priest's  bastard.'' 
Mantesquieu  declared  celibacy  to  be  libertinism. 

65.  Amelot  (Abraham  Nicholas),  born  in  Orleans  1134.  declared  the  celibacy  of 
the  clergy  to  have  been  established  a  law  in  order  to  prevent  the  alienation  of  the 
church  estate. 

66.  Pope  Pelaogius  was  unwilling  to  establish  the  Bishop  of  Sagola  in  his  see 
because  he  had  a  wife  and  family,  and  only  upon  condition  that  wife  and  chil- 
dren should  inherit  nothing  at  hit  death  except  what  he  then  possessed,  was  he 
finally  confirmed.    All  else  was  to  go  into  the  coffers  of  the  church. 


CELIBACY  8 1 

their  children  as  legitimate.  The  sons  of  such  con- 
tumacious priests  were  declared  forever  incapable  of 
taking  holy  orders,  unless  by  a  special  dispensation. 
The  church  showed  almost  equal  determination  in  the 
establishment  of  concubinage  as  in  the  enforcement  of 
priestly  celibacy,  each  of  these  systems  tending  to  its 
enrichment. 

Opposition  proved  of  no  permanent  avail.  Holding 
control  over  the  conscience  of  men,  asserting  the  pow- 
er to  unlock  the  doors  of  heaven  and  hell,  a  strongly 
organized  body  working  to  one  end,  it  is  not  a  sub- 
ject of  astonishment  that  the  church,  its  chief  object 
the  crushing  of  body  and  soul,  should  in  the  end  prove 
conqueror,  and  the  foulest  crimes  against  woman  re- 
ceive approval  of  the  entire  christian  world.  Many 
notable  consequences  followed  the  final  establishment 
of  celibacy  as  a  dogma  of  the  church. 

First  The  doctrine  of  woman's  inherent  wickedness 
and  close  fellowship  with  Satan  took  on  new  strength. 

Second.   Canon  Law  gained  full  control  of  civil  law. 

Third.  An  organized  system  of  debauchery  arose 
under  mask  of  priestly  infallibility. 

Fourth.  Auricular  confession  was  confirmed  as  a 
dogma  of  the  church. 

Fifth.  Prohibition  of  the  Scriptures  to  the  laity 
was  enforced. 

Sixth.  Crime  was  more  openly  protected,  the  sys- 
tem of  indulgences  gained  new  strength, becoming  the 
means  of  great  revenue  to  the  church. 

Seventh.  Heresy  was  more  broadly  denned  and  more 
severely  punished. 

Eight.  The  Inquisition  was  established. 

When  Innocent  III  completed  the  final  destruction  of 
sacerdotal  marriage,  it  was  not  upon  disobedient  priests 


82  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  most  severe  punishment  fell,  but  upon  innocent 
women  and  children.67  Effort  was  made  to  force  wives 
to  desert  their  husbands.  Those  who  proved  contu- 
macious were  denied  christian  burial  in  an  age  when 
such  denial  was  looked  upon  as  equivalent  to  eternal 
damnation;  property  left  such  wives  was  confiscated 
to  the  church;  they  were  forbidden  the  eucharist; 
churching  after  childbirth  was  denied  them;  they 
were  termed  harlots  and  their  children 
bastards,  while  to  their  sons  all  office  in  the 
church  was  forbidden.  If  still  contumacious  they 
were  handed  over  to  the  secular  power  for  condign 
punishment,  or  sold  as  slaves  for  the  benefit  of  the 
church.  They  were  regarded  as  under  the  direct  con- 
trol of  Satan  himself,  as  beings  who  iniquitously  stood 
between  their  husbands  and  heaven. 

At  numerous  times  in  the  history  of  the  church 
women  have  been  brought  to  despair  by  its 
teachings,  and  large  numbers  driven  to  suicide.  A 
similar  period  was  inaugurated  by  the  confirmation  of 
priestly  celibacy.  The  wives  of  such  men,  suddenly 
rendered  homeless  and  with  their  children  classed 
among  the  vilest  of  earth,  powerless  and  despairing, 
hundreds  shortened  their  agonies  by  death  at  their 
own  hands.  For  all  these  crimes  the  church  alone  is 
responsible. 

Under  celibacy,  auricular  confession,  and  extended 
belief  in  witchcraft,  a  new  era  of  wrong  toward  woman 
was  inaugurated.  From  thenceforth  her  condition  was 
more  degraded  than  even  during  the  early  centuries  of 
Christianity.  Accusations  of  heresy,  which  included 
witchcraft    as  well  as  other    sins  against    the    church 

67.  Caidinal  Otto  decreed  that  wives  and  children  of  priests  should  have  no 
benefit  from  the  estate  of  the  husband  and  father;  such  estates  should  be  vested 
in  the  church. 


CELIBACY  83 

were  constantly  made  against  that  being  who  was  be- 
lieved to  have  brought  sin  into  the  world.  Whoso- 
ever dared  question  the  infallibility  of  the  church  by 
use  of  their  own  judgment,  even  upon  the  most 
trivial  subjects,  immediately  fell  into  condemna- 
tion. 

Canon  Law  gaining  full  control  over  civil  law,  the 
absolute  sinfulness  of  divorce,  which  maintained  by  the 
church  has  yet  been  allowed  by  civil  law,  was  fully 
established.  Woman  was  entirely  at  the  mercy  of 
man,  the  Canon  Law  maintaining  that  the  confession  of 
a  guilty  woman  could  not  be  received  in  evidence  against 
her  accomplice,  although  it  held  good  against  her- 
self68 and  the  punishment  due  to  both  was  made  to 
fall  on  the  woman  alone.69  The  best  authorities  prove 
that  while  the  clergy  were  acquainted  with  the  civil 
codes  that  had  governed  the  Roman  Empire,  they 
made  but  little  use  of  them.70  Upon  coming  to  the 
throne,  Justinian71  had  repealed  the  law  of  the  Patri. 
archate  which  gave  the  father  sole  right  and  title  to,  and 
interest  in  the  children  of  legal  marriage,  but  this  was 
soon  again  subverted  by  ecclesiasticism  and  under 
Canon  Law  a  mother  was  prohibited  all  authority  over 

68.  In  1396  Charles  VI.  forbade  that  the  testimony  of  women  should  be  re- 
ceived in  any  of  the  courts  of  his  kingdom, 

6g.  The  council  of  Tivoli,  in  the  Soisonnais,  909,  in  which  twelve  bishops  took 
part,  promulgated  a  Canon  requiring  the  oath  of  seven  witnesses  to  convict  a 
priest  with  having  lived  with  a  woman;  if  these  failed  of  clearing  him  he  could 
do  so  by  his  own  oath. 

70.  Though  the  clergy  now  and  then  made  use  both  of  the  Justinian  and  Theo- 
dosian  Codes,  the  former  body  of  law,  as  such,  was  notwithstanding  from  the 
reign  of  the  Emperor  Justinian,  or  about  the  year  of  our  Lord  560,  till  the  begin, 
ning  of  the  12th  century,  or  the  year  of  Christ,  1230  or  thereabouts,  of  no  force  in 
the  west  in  matter  of  government.     Seldon. — Dissertation  on  F/eta,  p.  112. 

71.  The  codification  of  the  laws  under  Justinian  were  largely  due  to  his  wife* 
the  Empress  Theodosia,  who  having  risen  from  the  lowest  condition  in  the 
empire,  that  of  a  circus  performer,  to  the  throne  of  the  East,  proved  herself 
capable  in  every  way  of  adorning  that  high  position. 


84  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

her  child,  its  relationship  to  her  even  being  denied. 
While  under  Common  Law  children  followed  the  con- 
dition of  their  fathers,  who  if  free  transmitted  free- 
dom to  their  children,  yet  in  the  interests  of  priestly 
celibacy,  under  church  legislation,  an  entire  reversal 
took  place  and  children  were  held  to  follow  the  condi- 
tion of  their  mothers.  Thus  serf-mothers  bore  serf- 
children  to  free-born  fathers;  slave  mothers  bore  slave 
children  to  their  masters;  while  unmarried  mothers 
bore  bastard  children  to  both  priestly  and  lay  fathers, 
thus  throwing  the  taint  of  illegitimacy  upon  the  inno- 
cent child,  and  the  sole  burden  of  its  maintenance  upon 
the  mother.  This  portion  of  Canon  Law  also  became 
the  law  of  the  State  in  all  Christian  countries,72  and 
is  in  existence  at  the  present  time,  both  civil  codes 
and  statue  laws  enforcing  this  great  wrong  of  the 
Church.73  The  relations  of  men  and  women  to  each 
other,  .the  sinfulness  of  marriage  and  the  license  of 
illicit  relations  for  the  priesthood,  employed  the  thought 
of  the  church.  The  duty  of  woman  to  obey,  not  alone 
her  male  relatives,  but  all  men  by  virtue  of  their  sex, 
was  sedulously  inculcated.  She  was  trained  to  hold 
her  own  desires  and  even  thoughts  in  abeyance  to 
those  of  man,  as  to  one  who  was  rightfully  her  master. 
Every  holy  principle  of  her  nature  was  subverted  by 
this  degrading  assumption. 

When  auricular  confession  became  confirmed  as  a 
dogma  of  the  church,  it  threw  immense  power  over 
the  family  into  the  hands  of  the  priesthood,  a  power 
capable  of  being  converted  to  many  ends,  but  was  spec- 

72.  By  the  Code  Napoleon,  all  research  into  paternity  is  forbidden.  The 
Christian  Church  was  swamped  by  hysteria  from  the  third  to  the  sixteenth  cen- 
t«ry.    Canon  Charles  Kingsley.— Life  and  Letters. 

73.  Althouph  under  law  the  entire  property  of  the  wife  became  that  of  the  hus- 
band upon  marriage. 


CELIBACY  85 

ially  notable  in  its  influence  upon  morals.74  Although 
auricular  confession  was  not  established  as  a  dogma 
until  the  Council  of  1215,  it  had  been  occasionally 
practiced  at  early  date,  carrying  with  it  the  same  im- 
morality in  lesser  form  as  that  which  afterwards 
became  so  great  a  reproach  to  the  church.76  Through 
its  means  the  priesthood  gained  possession  of  all 
family,  social  and  political  secrets,  thus  acquiring  in- 
formation whose  power  for  evil  was  unlimited.  The 
spirit  of  evil  never  found  a  more  subtle  method  of 
undermining  and  destroying  human  will,  its  most  de- 
basing influences  falling  upon  woman,  who  through 
fear  of  eternal  damnation  made  known  her  most 
secret  thoughts  to  the  confessor,  an  unmarried  and 
frequently  a  youthful  man.  It  soon  became  a  source 
of  very  great  corruption  to  both  priest  and  woman. 

Another  effect  of  this  council  was  the  formal  prohi- 
bition of  the  scriptures  to  the  laity,  and  thenceforth 
the  Bible  was  confined  to  the  priest  who  explained  its 

74.  A  treatise  on  Chastity,  attributed  to  Pope  Sixtus  III.,  barely  admits  that 
married  people  can  secure  eternal  life,  though  stating  that  the  glory  of  heaven  is 
not  for  them. 

75.  The  Romish  religion  teaches  that  if  you  omit  to  name  anything  in  confes- 
sion, however  repugnant  or  revolting  to  purity  which  you  even  doubt  having 
committed,  your  subsequent  confessions  are  thus  rendered  null  and  sacrilegious. 
Chiniquy.—  The  Priest,  the  Woman  and  the  Confessional,  p.  202.  Study  the  pages 
of  the  past  history  of  England,  France,  Italy,  Spain,  etc.,  and  you  will  see  that 
the  gravest  and  most  reliable  historians  have  everywhere  found  instances  of 
iniquity  in  the  confessional  box  which  their  order  refused  to  trace.     Ibid,  p.  175. 

It  is  a  public  fact  which  no  learned  Roman  Catholic  has  ever  denied  that 
auricular  confession  became  a  dogma  and  obligatory  practica  of  the  church  only 
at  the  Lateran Council,  in  the  year  1215,  under  Pope  Innocent  III.  Not  a  single 
trace  of  auricular  confession  as  a  dogma  can  be  found  before  that  year.  Ibid, 
P.  239. 

Auricular  confession  originated  with  the  early  heretics,  especially  with 
Marcius.  Bellarmin  speaks  of  it  as  something  to  be  practiced.  But  let  us  hear 
what  the  contemporary  writers  have  to  say  on  this  question:  "Certain  women 
were  in  the  habxt  of  going  to  the  heretic  Marcius  to  confess  their  sins  to  him. 
But  as  he  was  smitten  with  thsir  beauty,  and  they  loved  him  also,  they  ab 
themselves  to  sin  with  him."— Ibid,  p.  234. 


86  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

teachings  in  the  interests  of  his  own  order,  adding  to, 
or  taking  from,  to  suit  his  own  interests;  the  recent 
new  version  showing  many  such  interpolations.™ 
Nothing  was  held  sacred  by  these  men,  who  sacrificed 
everything  to  their  own  advancement  and  that  of  their 
order. 

The  insolence  of  the  priesthood  was  that  of  all 
periods;  claiming  direct  inspiration  from  God,  they 
taught  their  own  infallibility  and  in  name  of  Him, 
whom  they  professed  to  serve,  the  grossest  crimes 
were  perpetrated,  and  this  profession  became  a  pro- 
tecting sanctuary  to  men  whose  villainous  lives  would 
otherwise  have  brought  them  to  the  gallows.77 

With  conviction  of  woman's  supreme  wickedness, 
increased  through  the  formal  recognition  of  celibacy 
as  a  dogma  of  the  church,  with  the  establishment  of 
auricular  confession,  and  the  denial  of  the  Bible  to  the 
laity,  the  persecution  of  woman  for  witchcraft  took  on 
new  phase.  The  belief  that  it  was  the  ordinary 
method  through  which  the  devil  won  souls,  together 
with  the  persuasion  that  woman  through  her  greater 
wickedness  fell  more  readily  than  men  into  such  prac- 

76.  Disraeli,  who  is  most  excellent  authority,  declared  the  early  English 
edition  of  the  Bible  contained  6,000  errors,  which  were  constantly  introduced 
and  passages  interpolated  for  sectarian  purposes  or  to  sustain  new  creeds ; 
sometimes,  indeed,  they  were  added  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  all  scriptural 
authority  by  the  use  of  texts. 

The  revisers  of  the  New  Testament  found  150,000  errors,  interpolations,  addi- 
tions and  false  translations  in  the  King  James  or  common  version. 

77.  Cardinal  Wolsey  complained  to  the  Pope  that  both  the  secular  and  regu- 
lar priests  were  in  the  habit  of  committing  actions  for  which  if  not  in  orders, 
they  would  have  been  promptly  executed. 

The  claim  of  direct  inspiration  from  God  exists  equally  among  Protestants  as 
among  Catholics,  and  even  among  the  Unitarians,  who  deny  Christ's  divinity. 
A  notable  instance  of  this  kind,  both  because  of  the  high  scientific  and  moral 
character  of  the  clergyman,  took  place  in  the  pulpit  of  the  May  Memorial 
Church,  Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  December  4th,  1887,  as  reported  in  the  Morning 
Standard  of  the  5th. 

Luther  declared  that  priests  believed  themselves  to  be  as  superior  to  the  laity 
in  general  as  males  were  held  superior  to  females. 


CELIBACY  87 

tices,  acquired  a  firmer  seat  in  theology.  Heresy,  of 
which  witchcraft  was  one  phase,  became  a  greater  sin; 
the  inquisition  arose,  and  the  general  characteristics 
of  the  christian  world  rapidly  grew  more  inimical  to 
humanity,  and  especially  to  woman's  freedom,  happi- 
ness and  security. 

The  influence  of  the  church  daily  grew  more  unfa- 
vorable to  all  virtue;  vice  was  sustained,  immorality 
dignified.  The  concubines  of  priests  called  "wives," 
in  bitter  mockery  of  that  relation  in  which  the  legal 
wife  was  termed  concubine,  were  known  as  "The  Hal- 
lowed Ones,"  "The  Honored  Ones."  No  stigma 
attached  to  such  a  life;  these  women  formed  quite  a 
class  in  mediaeval  society,  themselves  and  their  chil- 
dren ranking  the  wives  of  ordinary  laymen;78  the  touch 
of  a  priest  had  sanctified  them.  In  the  estimation  of 
the  church  an  immoral  life  led  with  a  priest  was 
more  honorable  than  marriage  with  a  layman,  and  all 
the  obligations  such  a  relation  implied.  Priests 
assumed  immunity  from  wrong  doing.  So  far  from 
celibacy  causing  purity  of  life,  through  it  the  priest- 
hood grew  to  look  upon  themselves  as  especially  set 
apart  for  indulgence  in  vice.  Did  not  history  so  faith- 
fully portray  this  condition,  it  would  seem  impossible 
that  it  had  existed  among  people  asserting  the  highest 
morality,  and  is  proof  of  the  danger  of  irresponsible 
power  to  possessor  and  victim  alike,  and  the  ease  with 
which  the  true  meaning  of  right  and  wrong  is  lost 
under  such  circumstances. 

The  theory  of  the  church  that  as  the  fall  and  sin 
really  existed,  priestly  immorality  became  a  necessity 

78.  The  legal  wife  of  a  priest  was  termed  "An  Unhallowed  Thing,"  while  mis- 
tresses and  concubines  were  known  as  "The  Hallowed  Ones,"  "The  Honored 
Ones."  In  parts  of  France,  especially  in  Paris,  the  latter  epithet  was  common 
as  applied  to  a  priest's  mistress.— MicheUt, 


88  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

in  order  to  perpetuate  the  world  even  through  a  con- 
tinuance of  the  original  sin,  was  a  species  of  fine 
casuistry  for  which  the  church  in  all  ages  has  been 
remarkable.  The  general  tenor  of  the  church  against 
marriage,  together  with  its  teaching  of  woman's 
greater  sinfulness,  were  the  chief  causes  which  under- 
mined the  morality  of  the  christian  world  for  fifteen 
hundred  years.  With  these  doctrines  were  also  taught 
the  duty  of  woman  to  sacrifice  herself  in  every  way  for 
man,  a  theory  of  which  the  present  century  is  not  un- 
familiar. The  loss  of  chastity  in  woman  was  held  as 
light  sin  in  comparison  to  the  degradation  that  mar- 
riage would  bring  to  a  priest,  and  young  girls  ruined 
by  some  candidate  or  priest,  considered  themselves 
doing  God  service  in  refusing  a  marriage  that  would 
cause  the  expulsion  of  the  priestly  lover  from  the 
ecclesiastical  order.  With  woman's  so-called  "divine," 
but  rather  demoniac  self-sacrifice,  Heloise  chose  to  be 
deemed  the  mistress  of  Abelard  rather  than  by  ac- 
knowledging their  marriage  destroy  his  prospects  oi 
advancement  in  the  church.7* 

The  State  sustained  the  Church  in  its  opposition  to 
marriage,  and  we  find  the  anomaly  of  marriage  for 
political  reasons  where  the  parties  forever  separated 
at  the  altar.  St.  Jerome,  and  at  a  later  date  St. 
Dunstan,  sustained  the  policy  of  such  marriages.  The 
history  of  Britain  gives  instances  of  early  queens  thus 
separating  from  their  newly  made  husbands  at  the 
close  of  the  ceremony,  dedicating  their  lives  to  celi- 
bacy and  their  fortunes  to  the  church. 

79.  Heloise  sacrificed  herself  on  account  of  the  impediments  the  church 
threw  in  the  way  of  the  married  clergy's  career  of  advancement.  As  his  wife 
he  would  lose  the  ascending  ladder  of  ecclesiastical  honors,  priory,  abbacy, 
iM.-shopric,  metropolitane,  cardinalate,  and  even  that  which  was  above  and  be- 
yond all.     Milman.—  Latin  Christianity. 


CELIBACY  89 

Nor  did  this  institution  neglect  that  large  class  of 
women  to  whom  marriage  was  made  impossible  be- 
cause of  the  numbers  of  men  to  whom  it  was  forbid- 
den. After  the  Lateran  Council  had  permanently 
settled  the  action  of  the  church  in  favor  of  priestly 
celibacy,  great  effort  was  made  to  draw  women  of 
wealth  into  a  monastic  life.  Religion  was  the  chief 
method  .  of  acquiring  power,  and  as  an  abbess  of  a 
religious  institution  it  opened  opportunity  for  power 
to  women  scarcely  possible  outside  the  church.  The 
two  highest  womanly  virtues  inculcated  by  the  church 
were  a  celibate  life  and  liberality  to  religious  houses. 
It  was  taught  if  anything  could  possibly  mitigate 
woman's  sin  through  Eve's  transgression,  it  was  the 
observance  of  these  two  conditions. 

To  the  student  this  is  the  most  remarkable  period 
in  the  history  of  the  church,  not  merely  as  a  culmi- 
nation of  the  effort  of  centuries  in  finally  deciding  the 
questions  of  celibacy,  so  long  agitated  with  such  vary- 
ing results,  but  in  the  immediate  change  and  perma- 
nent settlement  it  brought  about  in  regard  to  other 
church  dogmas,  as  well  as  its  pronounced  influence  in 
causing  the  Lutheran  Reformation. 

It  was  asserted  that  the  spiritual  office  of  the  priest 
sanctified  sin;  it  became  a  maxim  that  whatever  a 
priest  might  do  was  holy;  by  their  taking  part  in 
lasciviousness  it  became  consecration.  To  disobey  a 
priest  was  to  endanger  salvation;  it  was  libellous  and 
treasonable  to  question  the  purity  of  a  priest's  motives, 
hence  religion  became  a  screen  for  all  vice  and  a 
source  of  moral  degradation  to  all  women.  To  such 
extent  was  belief  carried  in  the  superior  purity  of  a 
celibate  life  that  but  little  more  than  300  years  since 
a  man  was  burned  at  the  stake  in  England  for  assert- 


90  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

ing  the  lawfulness  of  priestly  marriage.80  The  action 
of  the  council  of  1 215,  so  powerfully  sustaining  the  olden 
claims  of  the  superior  holiness  of  celibacy  soon  created  a 
belief  in  the  inability  of  a  priest  to  commit  sin. 
During  the  middle  ages  his  infallibility  was  constantly 
maintained,  his  superior  sanctity  in  consequence  of 
his  celibacy  universally  asserted.  It  was  impossible 
not  to  connect  the  idea  of  great  wickedness  with  those 
incapable  of  entering  this  holy  office,  and  as  woman 
by  virtue  of  sex  was  prohibited  priestly  functions, 
and  as  her  marriage  had  been  declared  a  necessity  for 
the  world,  these  conditions  were  used  as  arguments 
against  her.  The  conscience  and  morality  of  tens  of 
thousands  were  destroyed  by  these  teachings,  enforced 
as  they  were  by  all  the  dread  authority  of  the  church. 
The  christian  world  was  under  entire  control  of  a 
class  whose  aim  was  chiefly  that  of  personal  a^gran- 
dizement,  and  that  hesitated  at  no  means  for  securing 
1th  and  power. 

The  Inquisition  was  firmly  established;  under  its 
reign  six  hundred  methods  of  torture  were  known,  and 
it  was  conducted  with  such  secrecy  that  not  until 
dragged  before  it  were  many  of  its  victims  aware  they 
were  under  suspicion.  Even  when  imprisoned  in  its 
torture  chambers,  the  charges  against  them  were  kept 
secret  in  hopes  thereby  to  compel  self-accusation  upon 
other  points  The  inferiority  of  woman,  her  prone- 
ness  to  evil  and  readiness  to  listen  to  all  suggestions 
of  Satan,  was  taught  with  renewed  vigor  and  power 
for  evil. 

The  priest  regarded  himself  as  the  direct  represen. 
tative  of  divinity;    the  theory  of  infallibility  was    not 

80.  In  1558  one  Walter  Mill  was  indicted,  one  article  of  his  accusation  being 
his  assertion  of  the  lawfulness  of  sacerdotal  marriage.  He  was  condemned  to 
the  stake  and  burned.    Taine,— English  Literature. 


CELIBACY  91 

confined  to  the  pope,  but  all  dignitaries  of  the  church 
made  the  same  claim.  Asserting  themselves  incapable 
of  wrong  doing,  maintaining  an  especial  sanctification 
by  reason  of  their  celibacy,  priests  nevertheless  made 
their  holy  office  a  cover  for  the  most  degrading  sen- 
suality. Methods  were  taken  to  debauch  the  souls  as 
well  as  the  bodies  of  women.  Having  first  taught  their 
special  impurity,  it  was  now  maintained  that  immor- 
ality with  a  priest  was  not  sin,  but  on  the  contrary 
hallowed  the  woman,  giving  her  particular  claim  up- 
on heaven.  It  was  taught  that  sin  could  only  be  killed 
through  sin.81  The  very  incarnation  was  used  as  a 
means  of  weakening  woman's  virtue.  That  Christ  did 
not  enter  the  world  through  the  marriage  relation, 
stamped  with  christian  honor  a  system  of  concubinage 
in  the  church,  for  whose  warrant  woman  was  pointed 
to  the  Virgin  Mary.  As  an  enforcement  of  her  duty 
of  absolute  surrender  of  soul  and  body  to  the  will  of 
the  priest  the  course  of  the  Virgin  was  adduced, 
"who  obeyed  the  angel  Gabriel  and  conceived  without 
fear  of  evil,  for  impurity  could  not  come  of  a  spirit."82 
The  chastity  of  concubinage  and  the  unchasteness  of 
marriage  was  constantly  asserted  by  the  church,  and 
thus  the  mysteries  upon  which  its  foundations  were 
laid  were  used  by  it  for  the  degradation  of  woman, 
who  was  at  all  times  depicted  as  a  being  of  no  self- 
individuality,  but  one  who  had  been  created  solely 
for  man's  pleasure.  As  late  as  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, it  was  taught  that  a  priest  could  commit  no  sin. 
This  old  doctrine  took  new  strength  from  the  Illumes, 

81.  An  old  doctrine  which  often  turnt  up  again  in  the  middle  ages.  In  the 
seventeenth  century  it  prevailed  among  the  convents"  of  France  and  Spain. 
Michelet.— La  Sorceric^  p.  258. 

8a.  They  made  the  vilest  use  of  the  doctrine  that  Christ  was  born  of  a  Virgin, 
using  this  as  an  example  for  woman  to  be  followed.— Ibid,  p.  259. 


92  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

who  claimed  an  inner  divine  light.88  We  find  refer- 
ence to  priestly  immorality  and  claim  of  infallibility 
among  old  writers,  Boccaccio  in  many  of  his  stories 
putting  arguments  of  this  kind  in  the  mouth  of  his 
priestly  characters.84 

It  was  asserted  too  that  sin  was  of  the  body  alone, 
the  soul  knowing  nothing,  partaking  nothing  of  it. 
As  an  argument  in  favor  of  woman's  throwing  herself 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  priests  for  immoral  purposes, 
it  was  declared  that,  "The  devout  having  offered  up 
and  annihiliated  their  own  selves  exist  no  longer  but 
in  God;  thenceforth  they  can  do  no  wrong.  The  bet- 
ter part  of  them  is  so  divine  that  it  no  longer  knows 
what  the  other  is  doing." 

In  confirmation  of  this  doctrine  it  was  said  that 
Jesus  threw  off  his  clothing  and  was  scourged  naked 
before  the  people.  The  result  of  this  teaching  was 
the  almost  universal  immorality  of  Christendom. 
Under  such  religious  doctrine  it  could  but  be  expected 
that  the  laity  would  closely  imitate  the  priesthood. 
Europe  became  a  continent  of  moral  corruption,  of 
which  proof  is  overwhelming.  Could  we  but  relegate 
christian  immorality  to  the  dark  ages  we  might 
somewhat  palliate  it  under  plea  of  ignorance.  But 
unfortunately  for  such  claim  ample  proof  is  found  to 
show  that  the  enlightenment  of  modern  civilization  has 
not  yet  been  able  to  overthrow  the  basic  idea  upon 
which  this  immorality  rests.  Amid  the  material 
and    intellectual    advancement    of    the    last    hundred 

83.  They  must  kill  sin  by  being  more  humble  and  lost  to  all  sense  of  pride 
through  sin.  This  was  the  Quietist  doctrine  introduced  by  a  Spanish  priest, 
Molino,  who  claimed  it  as  the  result  of  an  inner  light  or  illumination.  He  de- 
clared that  "Only  by  dint  of  sinning  can  sin  be  quelled." 

84.  "  Let  not  this  surprise  you,"  replied  the  abbot.  "  My  sanctity  is  not  the 
less  on  this  accouut  because  that  abides  in  the  soul,  and  what  I  now  ask  of  you 
is  only  a  sin  of  the  body.  Do  not  refuse  the  grace  heaven  sends  you."  Boc- 
caccio. —Dtca  meron. 


CELIBACY  93 

years  we  find  spiritual  darkness  still  profound  in  the 
church  and  the  true  foundation  of  immorality  almost 
unrecognized. 

As  long  as  the  church  maintains  the  doctrine  that 
woman  was  created  inferior  to  man,  and  brought  sin 
into  the  world,  rendering  the  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of 
a  God  a  necessity,  just  so  long  will  the  foundation  of 
vice  and  crime  of  every  character  remain.  Not  until 
the  exact  and  permanent  equality  of  woman  with  man 
is  recognized  by  the  church,  aye,  even  more,  the 
greater  power  and  capacity  of  woman  in  the  creative 
function,  together  with  the  accountability  of  man  to 
woman  in  everything  relating  to  the  birth  of  a  new 
being,  is  fully  accepted  as  a  law  of  nature,  will  vice 
and  crime  disappear  from  the  world.  Until  that  time 
has  fully  come,  prostitution  in  its  varied  forms  will 
continue  to  exist,  together  with  alms-houses,  reforma- 
tories, jails,  prisons,  hospitals  and  asylums  for  the 
punishment,  reformation  or  care  of  the  wretched 
beings  who  have  come  into  existence  with  an  inherit- 
ance of  disease  and  crime  because  of  church  theory 
and  church  teaching. 

The  system  of  celibacy  produced  its  same  effects 
wherever  preached.  So  constant  was  the  system  of 
debauchery  practiced  in  England  during  the  reign  of 
Henry  VII.  that  the  gentlemen  and  farmers  of  Carnar- 
vonshire laid  complaint  against  the  clergy  of  system- 
atically seducing  their  wives  and  daughters.85  Women 
were  everywhere  looked  upon  as  slaves  and  toys,  to 
obey,  to  furnish  pleasure  and  amusement,  and  to  be  cast 
aside  at  will.  Under  the  religious  teaching  of  Chris- 
tendom it  could  not  but  be  expected  that  the  laity 
would  closely  imitate  the  priesthood,  and  to  victimize 

85.  Taine.—  Eng%  Lit.  1,363. 


94  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

women  became  the  custom  of  all  men.86  When  a  priest 
failed  to  take  a  concubine  his  parishoners  compelled 
him  to  do  so  in  order  to  preserve  the  chastity  of 
their  own  wives  and  daughters.  Draper87  tells  us  that 
in  England  alone  100,000  women  became  victims  of 
the  priests.  Houses  of  vile  character  were  maintained 
for  especial  use  of  the  priesthood.  The  marriage  of  a 
priest  was  called  a  deception  of  the  devil  who  thus 
led  him  into  an  adulterous  relation88  for  sake  of  alien- 
ating property  from  the  church. 

This  mediaeval  doctrine  that  sin  can  only  be  killed 
through  sin,  finds  expression  to-day  not  alone  in  relig- 
ion89 but  in  society  novels  ;90  its  origin,  like  many  other 
religious  wrongs,  being  directly  traceable  to  the  teach- 
ing of  St.   Paul.91 

The  incontinence  of  these  celibate  priests  ultimate- 
ly became  so  great  a  source  of  scandal  to   the   church 

86.  The  unmarried  state  of  the  clergy  was  in  itself  one  of  the  chief  causes  of 
sexual  excess.  The  enormously  numerous  clergy  became  a  perilous  plague  for 
female  morality  in  town  and  village.  The  peasants  endeavored  to  preserve  their 
wivrs  and  dMfbtOfl  from  clerical  seduction  by  accepting  no  pastor  who  did  not 
bind  himself  to  take  a  concubine.  In  all  towns  there  were  brothels  belonging  to 
the  municipality,  to  the  sovereign,  to  the  church,  the  proceeds  of  which  flowed 
into  the  treasury  of  proprietors. 

87.  Draper. — Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  498. 

88.  Men  in  orders  are  sometimes  deceived  by  the  devil  that  they  marry  un- 
righteously and  foredo  themselves  by  the  adulteries  in  which  they  continue.  In- 
stitutes of  Polity,  Civil  and  Ecclesiastical,  437. 

There  is  ground  for  the  assumption  that  the  Canon  which  bound  all  the  active 
members  of  the  church  to  perpetual  celibacy,  and  thus  created  an  impenetrable 
barrier  between  them  and  the  outer  world,  was  one  of  the  efficient  methods  in 
creating  and  sustaining  both  the  temporal  and  spiritual  power  on  the  Romish 
Church.     Taine. — English  Literature. 

89.  All  steps  are  necessary  to  make  up  the  ladder.  The  vices  of  men  become 
■teps  in  the  ladder  one  by  one  as  they  are  remounted.  The  virtues  of  man  are 
steps  indeed,  necessary  not  by  any  means  to  be  dispensed  with,  yet  though  they 
create  a  fair  atmosphere  and  a  happy  future,  they  are  useless  if  they  stand  alone. 
The  whole  nature  of  man  must  be  used  wisely  by  the  one  who  desires  to  enter  the 
way.  Seek  it  by  plunging  into  the  mysterious  and  glorious  depth  of  your  inmost 
being.  Se«k  it  bv  testing  all  experience,  by  utilizing  the  senses  in  order  to  under- 
stand the  growth  of  meaning  of  individuality  and  the  beauty  and  obscurity  of 
those  other  divine  fragments  which  are  struggling  side  by  side  with  you  and  from 
the  race  to  which  you  belong. — Light  on  the  Path,  Rule  XX. 

90.  "What  in  the  world  makes  you  look  so  sullen?"  asked  the  young  man  as  he 
took  his  arm  and  they  walked  towards  the  palace.  "I  am  tormented  with  wicked 
thoughts,"  answered  Eugene  gloomily.  "What  kind?  They  can  easily  be 
cured."     "How?"     "By  yielding  to  them."     Dialogue  in  Balsacs  Pire  Goriot, 

91.  /st  Cointhians  VII,  36. 


CELIBACY  95 

that  it  was  obliged  to  take  action.  Edicts  and  bulls 
were  fulminated  from  the  papal  chair,  although  the 
facts  of  history  prove  Rome  itself,  its  popes  and 
its  cardinals,  to  have  been  sunk  in  the  grossest  immor- 
ality. Spain,  the  seat  of  the  Inquisition,  and  at  that 
period  the  very  heart  of  Christendom,  was  the  first 
country  toward  which  investigation  was  turned,  Pope 
Paul  IV.  issuing  a  bull  against  those  confessors  who 
solicited  women,  provoking  them  to  dissolute  action. 
When  this  bull  of  investigation  first  appeared  in 
Spain,  it  was  accompanied  by  an  edict  commanding 
all  those  who  knew  of  monks  or  priests  that  had  thus 
abused  the  confessional  to  make  it  known  within 
thirty  days  under  grievous  penalty.  The  terrible 
power  of  the  church  intimidated  those  who  otherwise 
for  very  shame  would  surely  have  buried  the  guilt  of 
their  priests  in  oblivion,  and  so  great  was  the  number 
of  women  who  thronged  the  palace  of  the  Inquisition 
in  the  city  of  Seville  alone,  that  twenty  secretaries 
with  as  many  Inquisitors  were  not  sufficient  to  take 
the  deposition  of  the  witnesses.  A  second,  a  third 
and  a  fourth  thirty  days  were  appointed  for  investiga- 
tion, so  great  were  the  number  of  women  making  com- 
plaint.*2 So  large  a  number  of  priests  were  impli- 
cated that  after  a  four  months*  examination,  the  Holy 
Tribunal  of  the  Inquisition  put  a  stop  to  the  proceed- 
ings, commanding  that  all  those  immoralities  and 
crimes  against  womanhood  only  rendered  possible  in 
the  name  of  religion,  and  which  has  been  proven  by 
legal  evidence,  should  be  buried  in  eternal  oblivion. 
The  deposition  of  thousands  of  women  seduced  by 
their  confessors,  was  not  deemed  sufficient  evidence  for 
removal   of    the   guilty   priests   from  their  holy  offices. 

92.  Limbrock. — History  of  the  Inquisition. 


96  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Occasionally  a  single  priest  was  suspended  for  a  short 
time  but  in  a  few  months  restored  again  to  his  priest- 
ly position.93 

It  was  not  uncommon  for  women  to  be  openly  car- 
ried off  by  priests,  their  husbands  and  fathers  threat- 
ened with  vengeance  in  cases  of  their  attempted  re- 
covery.9* During  the  height  of  the  Inquisitorial 
power  it  was  not  rare  for  a  family  to  be  aroused  in 
the  night  by  an  ominous  knock  and  the  cry  "The 
Holy  Fathers,  open  the  door!" 

To  this  dread  mandate  there  could  be  but  one  reply, 
as  both  temporal  and  spiritual  power  lay  in  their 
hands.  A  husband,  father  or  son  might  thus  be  seized 
by  veiled  figures;  or  as  frequently  a  loved  wife  or 
young  daughter  was  dragged  from  her  bed,  her  fate 
ever  to  remain  a  mystery.  When  young  and  beautiful 
these  women  were  taken  to  replenish  the  Inquisitional 
harem;  the  "dry  pan,"  "boiling  in  oil,"  and  similar 
methods  of  torture,  threatened,  in  order  to  produce 
compliance  upon  part  of  wretched  victims.  No  Turk- 
ish seraglio  with  bow-string  and  sack  ever  exhibited 
as  great  an  amount  of  diabolical  wickedness  as  the 
prison-harems  of  the  Inquisition.  As  late  as  the 
seventeenth  century  Pope  Gregory  XV.  commanded 
strict  enforcement  of  the  bull  against  priestly  lechery 
not  alone  in  Spain,  but  in  all  other  parts  of  the  Chris- 
tian  world.       In    England   after  the  reformation,    the 

93.  Carema  reported  that  the  parish  priest  of  Naples  was  not  convicted  though 
several  women  deposed  that  he  had  seduced  them.  He  was,  however,  tortured 
and  suspended  for  a  year  when  he  again  entered  his  duties. 

94.  Lea. — Sacerdotal  Celibacy,  p.  422. 

The  secrecy  with  which  the  Inquisition  worked  may  be  conjectured  from  the 
fact  that  during  the  whole  time  its  officers  were  busy  gathering  evidence  upon 
which  to  condemn  Galileo,  his  friends  in  Rome,  none  of  whom  occupied  high 
position  in  the  church,  not  only  did  not  suspect  his  danger,  but  constantly  wrote 
him  in  the  most  encouraging  terms. 


CELIBACY  97 

same  condition  was  found  to  exist.95  But  edicts 
against  lasciviousness  were  vainly  issued  by  a  church 
whose  foundation  is  a  belief  in  the  supremacy  of 
one  sex  over  the  other,  and  that  woman  brought  sin 
into  the  world  through  having  seduced  man  into  the 
marriage  relation.  Despite  the  advance  of  knowledge 
and  civilization  the  effects  of  such  teachings  are  the 
same  now  as  during  the  middle  ages,  as  fully  proven 
at  time  of  separation  between  the  temporal  and  spir- 
itual power  in  Italy;9*  and  these  proofs  are  taken  from 
Catholic  sources.  In  1849  when  the  Roman  people 
opened  the  palace  of  the  Inquisition  there  was  found 
in  the  library  a  department  entitled  "Summary  of  So- 
licitations,"  being  a  record  of  cases  in  which  women 
had  been  solicited  to  acts  of  criminality  by  their  con- 
fessors in  the  pontifical  state.97  The  testimony  of 
Luther  as  to  the  moral  degradation  of  the  church  at 
time  of  the  Reformation  has  never  been  invalidated, 
98  and  is  entirely  in  accord  with  its  character  through- 
out history. 

95.  The  acts  of  the  Metropolital  Visitation  of  the  Archbishops  of  Wareham 
states  that  in  the  Diocese  of  Bangor  and  St.  Davids,  in  time  of  Henry  VIII.,  more 
than  eighty  priests  were  actually  presented  for  incontinence. 

96.  Against  this  separation  the  bitter  animosity  of  Pope  Leo  XIII.  was  seen  in 
his  refusal  of  the  gifts  tendered  him  by  the  royal  family  of  Italy  at  the  time  of  his 
jubilee. 

97.  And  the  summary  was  not  brief.  Dwight — Roman  Republic  in  184Q,  p. 
115.  Pope  John  XIII.,  having  appeared  before  the  council  to  give  an  account  of 
his  conduct,  he  was  proved  by  thirty-seven  witnesses,  the  greater  part  of  whom 
were  bishops  and  priests,  of  having  been  guilty  of  fornication,  adultery,  incest, 
sodomy,  theft  and  murder.  It  was  also  proved  by  a  legion  of  witnesses  that  he 
had  seduced  and  violated  300  nuns. —  The  Priest,  Woman  and  Confessional,  p.  268. 

Henry  III.,  bishop  of  Liege,  was  deposed  in  1274  for  having  sixty-five  illegiti- 
mate children.  Lecky. — Hist.  European  Morals,  p.  350.  This  same  bishop 
boasted  at  a  public  banquet  that  in  twenty-two  months  fourteen  children  had 
been  born  to  him.  Ibid,  Vol.  2,  p.  349.  It  was  openly  asserted  that  100,000 
women  in  England  were  made  dissolute  by  the  clergy.  Draper. — Intellectual 
Development  of  Europe ,  p.  498. 

98.  Familiar  Discourses  and  other  works.  In  Rome  are  born  such  a  multitude 
of  bastards  that  they  are  constrained  to  build  particular  monasteries,  where  they 
are  brought  up  and  the  pope  is  named  their  father.  When  any  great  processions 
are  held  in  Rome,  then  the  said  bastards  go  all  before  the  pope. — Familiar  Dis- 
courses, 383. 

After  Pope  Gregory  confirmed  celibacy  he  found  6,000  heads  of  infants  in  a 
fish  pond,  which  caused  him  to  again  favor  the  marriage  of  priests.— Ibid. 
Bishop  Metz,  to  my  knowledge,  hath  lost  the  annual  revenue  of  500  crowns,  which 
he  was  wont  to  receive  from  the  county  for  pardoning  of  whoring  and  adultery. — 
Ibid,  260. 


98  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

That  the  same  iniquities  are  connected  with  the 
confessional  to  day,  we  learn  from  the  testimony  of 
those  priests  who  have  withdrawn  from  the  commun- 
ion of  the  Catholic  Church  ;  Father  Hyacinthe  pub- 
licly declaring  that  ninety-nine  out  of  one  hundred 
priests  live  in  sin  with  the  women  they  have  destroyed. 
Another  priest  following  the  example  of  Father 
Hyacinthe  in  marrying,  asserted  that  he  took  this  step 
in  order  to  get  out  of  the  ultramontane  slough  and 
remain  an  honest  man."  That  the  Catholic  Church 
of  the  present  day  bears  the  same  general  charac- 
ter it  did  during  the  middle  ages  is  proven  from 
much  testimony.  Among  the  latest  and  most  import- 
ant witnesses,  for  minuteness  and  fullness  of  detail, 
is  Rev.  Charles  Chiniquy  in  his  works  "  The  Priest, 
The  Woman  and  the  Confessional  ; "  "  Fifty  Years 
of  Rome,"  etc.  Now  over  eighty  years  of  age,  Rev. 
Mr.  Chiniquy  was  for  more  than  fifty  years  a  Catholic 
priest  of  influence  and  high  reputation,  known  in 
Canada,  where  thousands  of  drunkards  reformed  under 
his  teaching,  as  the  "  Apostle  of  Temperance."  Be- 
coming convinced  of  the  immorality  of  the  Romish 
Church,  he  left  it  in  1856,  taking  with  him  five  thou- 
sand French  Canadians,  with  whom  he  settled  at 
St.  Anne,  Kankakee  County,  Illinois.  Having  united 
with  a  branch  of  the  Protestant  church,  he  was 
invited  to  Scotland  to  take  part  in  the  Tercen- 
tenary of  the  Reformation,  and  later  to  England, 
where  he  lectured  on  invitation  of  ministers  of 
every  evangelical  denomination.100     His  "  Fifty    Years 

99.  In  1874,  an  old  Catholic  priest  ot  Switzerland,  about  to  follow  Pere 
Hyacinthe's  example  in  abandoning  celibacy,  announced  his  betrothal  in  the 
following  manner  :  M  I  marry  because  I  wish  to  remain  an  honorable  man.  In 
the  seventeenth  century  it  wasa  proverbial  expression,  '  As  corrupt  as  a  priest,' 
and  this  might  be  said  to-day.  I  marry,  therefore,  because  I  wish  to  get  out  of 
the  Ultramontane  slough."-  Galignanis  Messenger,  September  19,  1874. 

100.  See  Biographical  Sketch.     [Died  January  16,  1899.] 


CELIBACY  99 

of  Rome  "  indissolubly  links  his  name  with  that  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  through  the  information  there  made 
known  regarding  the  Catholic  plot  for  President  Lin- 
coln's assassination. 

It  is  as  fully  a  law  of  moral  as  of  material  nature  that 
from  the  same  causes  the  same  effects  follow.  In  his  work 
upon  the  confessional101  Rev.  Mr.  Chiniquy  relates  inci- 
dents coming  under  his  own  personal  knowledge  while 
he  was  still  a  catholic  priest  regarding  its  present 
abuses.  The  character  of  the  questions  made  a  duty 
of  the  priest  to  ask  during  confession,  are  debasing  in 
the  extreme,  their  whole  tendency  towards  the  under- 
mining of  morality.  Too  broadly  indelicate  for  trans- 
lation these  priestly  instructions  are  hidden  in  Latin, 
but  are  no  less  made  the  duty  of  a  priest  to  under- 
stand and  use.  In  1877,  a  number  of  prominent 
women  of  Montreal,  Canada,  addressed  a  declaration 
and  protest  to  the  bishop  of  that  diocese  against  the 
abuses  of  the  confessional  of  which  their  own  expe- 
rience had  made  them  cognizant. 

DECLARATION 

To  his  Lordship  Bourget,  Bishop  of  Montreal 

Sir: — Since  God  in  his  infinite  me*cy  has  been 
pleased  to  show  us  the  errors  of  Rome,  and  has  given 
us  strength  to  abandon  them  to  follow  Christ,  we  deem 
it  our  duty  to  say  a  word  on  the  abominations  of  the 
confessional.  You  well  know  that  these  abominations 
are  of  such  a  nature  that  it  is  impossible  for  a  woman 
to  speak  of  them  without  a  blush.  How  is  it  that 
among  civilized  christian  men  one  has  so  far  forgotten 
the  rule  of  common  decency  as  to  force  women  to  re. 
veal  to  unmarried  men,  under  the  pains  of  eternal  dam. 
nation,  their  most  secret  thoughts,  their  most  sinful 
desires  and  their  most  private  actions? 

101.  pp.  86  to  140. 


IOO  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

How  unless  there  be  a  brazen  mask  on  your  priest's 
face  dare  they  go  out  into  the  world  having  heard  the 
tales  of  misery  which  cannot  but  defile  the  hearing, 
and  which  the  women  cannot  relate  without  having 
laid  aside  modesty  and  all  sense  of  shame.  The  harm 
would  not  be  so  great  should  the  Church  allow  no  one 
but  the  woman  to  accuse  herself.  But  what  shall  we 
say  of  the  abominable  questions  that  are  put  to  them 
and  which  they  must  answer? 

Here,  the  laws  of  common  decency  strictly  forbid 
us  to  enter  into  details.  Suffice  it  to  say,  were  hus- 
bands cognizant  of  one-tenth  of  what  is  going  on  be- 
tween the  confessor  and  their  wives,  they  would 
rather  see  them  dead  thaa  degraded  to  such  a  degree. 

As  for  us,  daughters  and  wives  from  Montreal  who 
have  known  by  experience  the  filth  of  the  confessional, 
we  cannot  sufficiently  bless  God  for  having  shown  us 
the  error  of  our  ways  in  teaching  us  that  it  was  not  at 
the  feet  of  a  man  as  weak  and  as  sinful  as  ourselves, 
but  at  the  feet  of  Christ  alone  that  we  must  seek  sal- 
vation. Julia  Herbert,  Marie  Rogers,  J.  Rocham, 
Louise  Picard,  Francoise  Dirringer,  Eugenie  Martin, 
and  forty-three  others.108 

In  reply  to  a  letter  of  inquiry  addressed  by  myself 
to  Rev.  Mr-  Chiniquy,  the  following  answer  was  re- 
ceived. 

"St.  Anne,  Kankakee  County,  Illinois. 

January  4,  1887. 

"Mrs.   Matilda  Joslyn  Gage, 

Madam; — 

"In  answer  to  your  honored  letter  of  the  29th 
Dec.  I  hasten  to  say:  First.  The  women  of  Montreal 
signed  the  declaration  you  see  in  'The  Priest,  the 
Woman  and  the  Confessional, '  in  the  fall  of  1877.  I 
do  not  remember  the  day.  Second,  As  it  is  ten  years 
since  I  left  Montreal  to  come  to  my  Missionary  field 
of  Illinois,  I  could  not  say  if  these  women  are  still  in 
Montreal  or  not.  Great,  supreme  efforts  were  secretly 
made  by   the  Bishop  of  Montreal    to   show    that  these 

10a.  To  be  found  in  Tht  Priest  >  the  Woman  and  the  Confessional, 


CELIBACY  IOl 

names  were  forged  in  order  to  answer  and  confound  me, 
but  the  poor  Bishop  found  that  the  document  was  too 
correct,  authentic  and  public  to  be  answered  and  at- 
tacked, and  he  remained  mute  and  confounded,  for 
many  of  these  woman  were  well  known  in  the  city. 
"  Third.  You  will  find  the  answer  to  your  other  ques- 
tions, in  the  volume  'Fifty  Years  in  the  Church  of 
Rome,'  which  I  addressed  you  by  to-day's  mail. 
"Respectfully  yours  in  Christ, 

*C.  Chiniquy." 

The  same  assertion  of  priestly  infallibility  is  made 
to-day  as  it  was  centuries  ago,  the  same  declaration 
of  change  of  nature  through  priestly  celibacy.  Upon 
this  question  Mr.   Chiniquy  says: 

If  any  one  wants  to  hear  an  eloquent  oration  let 
him  go  where  the  Roman  Catholic  priest  is  preaching 
on  the  divine  institution  of  auricular  confession. 
They  make  the  people  believe  that  the  vow  of  perpet- 
ual chastity  changes  their  nature,  turns  them  into 
angels  and  puts  them  above  the  common  faults  of  the 
fallen  children  of  Adam.  With  a  brazen  face  when 
they  are  interrogated  on  that  subject,  they  say  that 
they  have  special  graces  to  remain  pure  and  undenled 
in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  dangers;  that  the  Virgin 
Mary  to  whom  they  are  consecrated  is  their  powerful 
advocate  to  obtain  from  her  son  that  superhuman  vir- 
tue of  Chastity;  that  what  would  be  a  cause  of  sin 
and  perdition  to  common  men  is  without  peril  and 
danger  for  a  true  son  of  Mary.103 

A  work  entitled  "Mysteries  of  the  Neapolitan  Con- 
vents," its  author  Henrietta  Carracciola,  a  woman  of 
the  purest  blood  of  the  princes  ot  Italy,  daughter  of  the 
Marshal  Carracciola,  Governor  of  the  Province  of 
Pasi  in  Italy,  is  quoted  from,  by  Rev.  Mr.  Chiniquy, 
in  confirmation  of  his  statements  as  to  the  continued 
impurity  of  the  confessional. 

Finally  another  priest,  the  most  annoying  of  all  for 
his    obstinate  assiduity,  sought  to  secure  my  affections 

103.  Ibid,  p.  77-8. 


102  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

at  all  cost.  There  was  not  an  image  profane  poetry 
could  afford  him,  nor  a  sophism  he  could  borrow  from 
rhetoric,  no  wily  interpretation  he  could  give  to 
the  word  of  God,  which  he  did  not  employ  to  con- 
vert me  to  his  wishes.  Here  is  an  example  of  his 
logic: — 

"Dear  daughter,"  said  he  to  me  one  day,  "knowest 
thou  who  thy  God  truly  is?" 

"He  is  the  Creator  of  the  Universe,"  I  answered 
dryly. 

"No-no-no-no!  that  is  not  enough"  he  replied  laugh- 
ing at  my  ignorance;"  God  is  Love,  but  love  in  the 
abstract  which  receives  its  incarnation  in  the  mutual 
affection  of  two  hearts  which  idolize  each  other.  You 
must  then  not  only  love  God  in  the  abstract  existence, 
but  must  also  love  him  in  his  incarnation,  that  is, 
in  the  exclusive  love  of  a  man  who  adores  you.  Quod 
Dtus  est  amor  nee  colttus  nisi  amando. M 

"Then,"  I  replied,  "a  woman  who  adores  her  own 
lover  would  adore  Divinity  itself?"  "Assuredly,"  reiter- 
ated the  priest  over  and  over  again,  taking  courage 
from  my  remark  and  chuckling  with  what  seemed  to 
him  the  effect  of  his  catechism. 

"In  that  case,"  said  I  hastily,  "I  should  select  for 
my  lover  rather  a  man  of  the  world  than  a  priest." 

"God  preserve  you,  my  daughter!  God  preserve  you 
from  that  sin.  To  love  a  man  of  the  world,  a  sinner, 
a  wretch,  an  unbeliever,  an  infidel!  Why,  you  would 
go  immediately  to  hell.  The  love  of  a  priest  is  a 
sacred  love,  while  that  of  a  profane  man  is  infamy. 
The  priest  purifies  his  affections  daily  in  communion 
with  the  Holy  Spirit  ...  If  you  cannot  love  me 
because  I  am  your  confessor,  I  will  find  means  to 
assist  you  to  get  rid  of  your  scruples.  We  will  place 
the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  before  all  our  affectionate  dem- 
onstrations and  thus  our  love  will  be  a  grateful  offer- 
ing to  the  Lord  and  will  ascend  fragrant  with  perfume 
to  Heaven  like  the  smoke  of  the  incense  of  the  Sanc- 
tuary. Say  to  me  for  example  T  love  you  in  Jesus 
Christ,  last  night  I  dreamed  of  you  in  Jesus  Christ/  and 
you  will  have  tranquil   conscience,  because    in    doing 


CELIBACY  IO3 

this  God  will  sanctify  every  transport  of  your  love." 
Rev.  Mr.  Chiniquy  who  in  his  fifty  years  of  Romish 
priesthood  possessed  every  opportunity  for  knowing  the 
truth,  does  not  hesitate  to  affirm  that  the  popes  are  to- 
day of  the  same  general  immoral  character  they  were 
in  the  earlier  centuries  of  the  Church.      He  says: 

Let  not  my  readers  be  deceived  by  the  idea  that  the 
popes  of  Rome  in  our  days  are  much  better  than  those 
of  the  ninth,  tenth,  eleventh  and  twelth  centuries. 
They  are  absolutely  the  same — the  only  difference  is 
that  to-day  they  take  a  little  more  care  to  conceal 
their  secret  orgies.  Go  to  Italy  and  there  the  Roman 
Catholics  themselves  will  show  you  the  two  beautiful 
daughters  whom  the  late  Pope  Pius  IX.  had  from  two 
of  his  mistresses.  Inquire  from  those  who  have  per- 
sonally known  Pope  Gregory  XVI.  the  predecessor  of 
Pius  IX;  after  they  will  have  given  you  the  history 
of  his  mistresses,  one  of  whom  was  the  wife  of  his 
barber,  they  will  tell  you  that  he  was  one  of  the  great- 
est drunkards  in  Italy.104 

The  views  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  regard  to  mar- 
riage of  the  priesthood  was  recently  demonstrated  in 
the  United  States,  1885,  by  the  persecution  of  a 
priest  of  the  Uniate  Greek  Church  sent  as  a  missionary 
from  Austria  to  Pennsylvania.  The  Greek  Church, 
it  must  be  remembered,  permits  a  single  marriage  to 
a  priest.  The  Uniate  while  in  this  respect  following 
the  discipline  of  the  Greek  Church,  yet  admits  the  su- 
premacy of  the  Pope  which  the  regular  Greek  Church 
does  not.  The  Uniate  Greek  Church  accepts,  as  bind- 
ing, all  the  decisions  of  Rome  subsequent  to  the  divi- 
sion between  the  eastern  and  the  western  parts  of 
Christendom.  Endowed  with  authority  from  both 
branches,  Father  Wolonski  came  to  this  country  ac- 
companied by  his  wife,  in  full  expectation  of  fellowship 
with  his  catholic  brethren.  His  first  contrary  experi- 
ence occurred  in  Philadelphia  when    Archbishop  Ryan 

104.  Ibid,  p.  287 


104  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  the  Cathedral  refused  all  intercourse  with  him 
because  of  his  marriage.  Reaching  Shenandoah  where 
commissioned  by  his  own  Austrian  Bishop,  he  discov- 
ered himself  still  under  ban;  the  resident  priest  of 
the  catholic  church  having  warned  his  congregation 
under  pain  of  excommunication  to  shun  both  himself 
and  his  church,  upon  the  ground  that  the  Roman 
Church  under  no  circumstances  tolerated  a  married 
priest.  Eventually  the  subject  grew  to  such  propor- 
tions that  Father  Wolonski  was  recalled,  and  an  un- 
married priest  sent  in  his  stead.105 

105.  A  Shenandoah  correspondent  of  the  Pittsburgh  Commercial  Advertiser, 
June  5.  1885,  wrote: 

Shenandoah,  Pa.,  June  5.— Father  Wolonski,  of  this  place,  the  only  priest  of 
the  Uniate  Greek  Church  in  this  country,  has  been  recalled  to  Europe. 

The  Uniate  Greek  Church,  it  will  be  remembered,  comprehends  those  Chris- 
tians who,  while  they  follow  the  Greek  rite,  observe  the  general  discipline  of  the 
Greek  Church  and  make  use  of  the  Greek  liturgy,  are  yet  united  with  the  Church 
of  Rome,  admitting  the  double  procession  of  the  Spirit  and  the  supremacy  of  the 
Roman  Pontiff,  and  accepting  all  the  doctrinal  decisions  subsequent  to  the  Greek 
schism  which  have  force  as  articles  of  faith  in  the  Roman  Church.  The  usage  of 
the  Church  as  to  the  law  of  celibacy  is,  with  the  consent  of  the  Roman  Pontiff, 
the  same  as  among  the  other  Greeks,  and  Father  Wolonski  brought  a  wife  with 
him  to  Shenandoah  when  he  came  here  last  December.  This  fact  has  made 
both  the  priest  and  his  religion,  subjects  of  great  importance  here,  and  the  atten- 
tion they  have  received  has  resulted  in  his  recall  to  Limberg,  Austria,  the  see 
of  the  diocese  from  which  he  was  transferred  here. 

FATHER  WOLONSKI   AND   THE   ARCHBISHOP. 

When  Father  Wolonski  arrived  in  Philadelphia  he  visited  the  Cathedral  and 
sought  an  inrerview  with  Archbishop  Ryan,  but  when  that  gentleman  discovered 
th.it  he  was  married  he  refused  to  treat  with  him.  The  priest  then  came  to 
Shenandoah,  as  directed  by  Bishop  Sembratowicz,  of  Limberg,  who  sent  him  on 
his  mission.  Father  O'Reilly,  of  the  Irish  Catholic  Church,  warned  his  congre- 
gation, under  pain  of  excommunication,  to  shun  the  church  and  priest,  at  the 
same  time  tacitly  denying  that  the  Roman  Church  recognized  the  right  of  any 
priest  to  marry.  The  matter  led  to  great  controversy,  dnring  which  Father 
Wolonski  established  his  congregation,  and  arrangements  have  been  made  for 
the  erection  of  a  church.  To  avoid  further  trouble,  however,  the  Bishop  of  Lim- 
berg has  selected  and  sent  an  unmarried  priest  to  succeed  him,  and  Father 
Wolonski  will  return  to  Austria.  Father  Wolonski  is  an  intelligent  and  highly- 
educated  gentleman,  and  has  made  a  large  number  of  friends  during  the  few 
months  he  has  been  here.  He  speaks  several  languages,  and  during  his  stay 
here  acquired  a  remarkable  knowledge  of  English.  He  has  worked  incessantly 
since  his  arrival  here  for  the  temporal  as  well  as  the  spiritual  comfort  of  his  peo- 
ple; and  has  made  a  large  circle  of  acquaintances,  who  will  regret  his  departure 
from  the  town. 


CELIBACY  IO5 

From  the  experience  of  Father  Wolonski  less  than  a 
decade  since,  with  the  bitter  hostility  shown  by  the 
church  towards  Father  Hyacinthe,  we  find  that  a  belief  in 
the  special  holiness  of  celibacy  is  as  dominant  in  the 
Catholic  church  to-day  as  at  any  period  of  its  history; 
concurrent  testimony  teaching  us  that  its  greatest  evils 
remain  the  same  as  of  old.  It  is  less  than  twenty  years 
since  the  whole  christian  world  was  interested  in  a 
suit  brought  against  the  heirs  of  the  deceased  Cardinal 
Antonelli  in  order  to  secure  recognition  of  his  daugh- 
ter's claim  to  inheritance.  This  girl  was  everywhere 
spoken  of  by  the  Catholic  Church  as  "a  sacrilegious 
child,"  that  is,  a  being  who  had  violated  sacred  things 
by  coming  into  existence.  The  destruction  of  her 
mother's  life,  her  own  illegitimacy,  the  wrong  done  to 
her  mother's  family  and  to  society  were  held  as  of  no 
moment  beside  the  fact  that  her  claims,  if  allowed, 
would  take  property  from  the  church.  The  love  of 
the  Great  Cardinal  for  this  girl's  mother  was  fully 
proven,  but  the  church  having  established  celibacy  in 
order  that  it  might  control  the  property  of  its  priests, 
was  not  inclined  to  permit  any  portion  to  be  diverted 
from  that  source.  Honesty,  justice,  and  the  ties  of 
natural  affection,  now  as  of  yore  are  not  part  of  the 
Church  system.  In  consequence,  this  suit  of  the  ille- 
gitimate child  of  the  Great  Cardinal  Secretary,  filled 
not  alone  Italy,  but  the  whole  Catholic  world  with 
disgrace. 

Among  the  countries  now  striving  to  free  themselves 
from  Church  dominion  is  Mexico.  A  letter  to  the 
New  York  Herald,  winter  of  1892,  regarding  the  revolu- 
tion there  in  progress,  said  of  Diaz: 

Instead  of  his  being  assisted  by  the  Church  it  has 
been  his  bitterest  and  most    relentless  enemy   and  op- 


106  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

ponent.  The  Church  in  Mexico  is  opposed  to  all  en- 
lightenment of  the  people.  The  clergy,  if  they  can  be 
honored  with  that  name,  fight  all  improvements.  They 
want  no  railways  or  telegraphs  and  when  he  adopted  a 
system  of  compulsory  education  the  war  began  in  earn- 
est. Diaz  was  determined,  however,  and  he  retaliated 
by  closing  up  the  convents  and  prohibiting  the  estab- 
lishment of  monasteries.  Being  further  opposed  in  his 
efforts  at  reform  and  defied  by  the  priests  he  put  hun- 
dreds of  them  in  Pueblo  in  jail  and  prohibited  the 
ringing  of  Church  bells  in  certain  localities.  He  for- 
cibly impressed  on  them  the  fact  that  he  was  running 
Mexico,  not  they.  He  gave  them  to  understand  that 
his  ideas  of  Christianity  was,  that  priests 
should  preach  Christ  crucified  and  not  revolution  and 
infraction  of  the  laws. 

In  Mexico,  priests  can  keep  mistresses  with  im- 
punity. From  a  church  to  a  gambling-table  is  but  a 
step,  and  the  priests  gamble  with  the  rest.  The  ren- 
tals of  houses  of  ill-fame,  of  gambling-houses,  of  bull- 
pens  all  go  to  a  church  which  is  supposed  to  teach 
religion.  Because  Diaz,  a  catholic  himself,  will  not 
tolerate  such  crimes  under  the  guise  of  religion  he  is 
fought  by  the  church  and  is  the  recipient  of  their 
anathemas. 

Take  the  leading  church  in  Monterey  outside  of 
the  cathedral.  You  step  from  the  church-door  to  a 
plaza  owned  by  the  church  and  in  which  stand  fifty 
tents  in  which  are  conducted  monte,  roulette  and 
other  games  of  chance.  Behind  this  stand  the 
bull-pen,  and  the  profits  and  rentals  go  to  the 
Church. 

With  all  these  lights  the  most  plausible  inference 
or  theory  is  that  the  clerical  party,  as  they  see  all 
these  privileges  being  swept  away,  will  cheerfully  con- 
tribute the  sinews  of  war  with  which  to  carry  on  a  rev- 
olution against  Diaz.  They  have  agents  in  Europe 
and  the  money  can  come  through  that  source  without 
detection. 

The  agent  of  the  Clerical  Party  in  Europe  is  the 
Church  itself.     As    a  body,  it   has  ever    opposed    ad- 


CELIBACY  Io7 

vancement  and  reform.  It  anathematized  the  print- 
ing press  as  an  invention  of  the  devil  and  has  stead- 
ily opposed  education  of  the  people.  Its  work  is  best 
done  in  the  darkness  of  ignorance  and  superstition. 
For  this  cause  it  has  opposed  all  new  discoveries  in 
science,  all  reforms  of  whatever  character.10*  Not  by  the 
Catholic  Church  alone,  but  under  the  "Reformation," 
as  we  have  seen,  the  same  prohibition  of  the  Bible  to 
common  people,  has  existed  the  same  resistance  to  edu- 
cation of  the  masses,  the  same  opposition  to  anti- 
slavery,  to  temperance,  to  woman's  demand  for  equality 
of  opportunity  with  man.  The  general  nature  of  the 
church  does  not  change  with  change  of  name.  Look- 
ing backward  through  history  we  even  find  the  same 
characteristics  under  the  patriarchate;  love  of  power, 
greed  for  money,  and  intense  selfishness  combined  in 
a  general  disregard  for  the  rights  of  others. 

M.  Renan's  drama,  "  L'Abbesse  de  Jouarre,"  was 
written  because  he  wished  to  prove  the  worthlessness 
of  those  vows  imposed  on  catholic  priests  and  nuns, 
as  well  as  show  the  bondage  under  which  they  held 
the  feminine  conscience,  while  the  masculine  conscience 
throws  them  aside.  It  is  not  alone  the  nuns  whose 
conscience  is  bound,  but  all  feminine  members  of  the 
catholic  church  are  more  closely  held  in  a  spiritual 
bondage,  than  the  male  members  of  that  church.  In 
In  1885,  a  letter  from  Chili  to  the  "New  York  Sun  " 
graphically  pictured  certain  Chilian  women  penitents 
who  are  known  by  a    peculiar    dress  they  are  required 


106.  And  yet  the  world  "does  move,"  and  the  experience  of  the  church  is  much 
that  of  the  big  elephant  Jumbo,  who  in  opposing  his  vast  form  to  a  train  of  cars 
met  his  death  at  the  engine. 


108  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

to  wear.107  Others  whose  sins  are  so  great  that  they 
cannot  be  purged  by  a  penitential  dress,  retire  for  a 
season  to  the  "Convent  of  Penitents,"  where  by  mortifi- 
cation of  the  body  they  hope  to  gain  absolution  for 
the  soul.  Still  more  severe  than  this  retreat  are  other 
convents  known  as  "Houses  of  Detention,"  where  way- 

107.  The  Chili  mantas  and  skirts  of  white  flannel  are  worn  by  penitentes,  or 
women  who  have  committed  some  heinous  sin  and  thus  advertise  their  penitence; 
or  those  who  have  taken  some  holy  vow  to  get  a  measure  nearer  heaven,  and  go 
about  the  street  with  downcast  eyes,  looking  at  nothing  and  recognizing  no  one. 
They  hover  about  the  churches,  and  sit  for  hours  crouched  before  some  saint  or 
crucifix,  saying  prayers  and  atoning  for  their  sin.  In  the  great  Cathedral  at  San- 
tiago, and  in  the  smaller  churches  everywhere,  these  penitentes,  in  their  snow- 
white  garments,  are  always  to  be  seen,  on  their  knees,  or  posing  in  other  uncom- 
!>le  postures,  and  looking  for  all  the  world  like  statues  carved  in  marble.  In 
the  Santiago  Cathedral  they  cluster  in  large  groups  around  the  confessionals, 
ng  to  receive  absolution  from  some  fat  and  burly  father,  that  they  may  rid 
th«  ir  bodies  of  the  mark  of  penitence  they  carry  and  their  souls  of  sin.  Some  of 
them  make  vows,  or  are  sentenced  by  their  confessors  to  wear  their  white 
shrouds  for  a  certain  time,  while  others  assume  them  voluntarily  until  they  have 
assurance  from  their  priest  that  their  sin  is  atoned  for.  Ladies  of  the  highest 
social  position  and  great  wealth  are  commonly  found  among  the  penitentes,  as 
well  as  young  girls  of  beauty  and  winning  grace.  Even  the  wives  of  merchants 
and  bankers  wander  about  the  streets  with  all  but  their  eyes  covered  with  this 
mantle,  which  gives  notice  to  the  world  that  they  have  sinned.  The  women 
of  Chili  are  as  pious  as  the  men  are  proud,  and  this  method  of  securing  absolu- 
tion is  quite  fashionable. 

Those  souls  that  cannot  be  purged  by  this  penitential  dress  retire  to  a  convent 
in  the  outskirts  of  the  city  called  the  Convent  of  the  Penitents,  where  they 
scourge  themselves  with  whips,  mortify  the  flesh  with  sackcloth,  sleep  in  ashes 
and  upon  stone  floors,  and  feed  themselves  on  mouldy  crusts,  Some  stay  longer 
and  some  a  less  time  in  these  houses  of  correction,  until  the  priests  by  whose 
advice  they  go  there.give  them  absolution;  but  it  is  seldom  that  the  inmates  are 
men.  They  are  usually  women  who  have  been  unfaithful  to  their  marriage  vows, 
or  girls  who  have  yielded  to  temptation.  After  the  society  season,  after  the  car- 
nival, at  the  end  of  the  summer  when  people  return  from  the  fashionable  resorts, 
and  at  the  beginning  of  lent  these  places  are  full,  and  throngs  of  carriages  sur- 
round them,  waiting  to  bear  back  to  their  homes  the  belles  who  are  sent  here  and 
can  find  no  room  to  remain. 

For  those  whose  sins  have  been  too  great  to  be  washed  out  by  this  process,  for 
those  whose  shame  has  been  published  to  the  world  and  are  unfitted  under  social 
laws  to  associate  with  the  pure,  other  convents  are  open,  established  purposely 
as  a  refuge  or  House  of  Detention.  Young  mothers  without  husbands  are  here 
cared  for,  and  their  babes  are  taken  to  an  orphan  asylum  in  the  neighborhood  to 
be  reared  by  the  nuns  for  the  priesthood  and  other  religious  orders.  It  is  the 
practice  for  parents  to  send  wayward  daughters  to  these  homes,  while  society  is 
given  to  understand  that  they  are  elsewhere  visiting  friends  or  finishing  their 
education.    After  a  time  they  return  to  their  families  and  no  questions  are  as*ed. 


CELIBACY  IO9 

ward  daughters  are  sent,  and  young  mothers  without 
husbands  are  cared  for.  But  the  whole  country  of 
Chili  fails  to  show  a  similar  dress,  or  house  of 
penitence,  or  correction  for  men.  Shame  and  penance, 
equally  with  sin,  have  been  relegated  by  the  church 
to  women  alone. 

The  confessional  is  not  frequented  by  men,  and 
mass  is  but  seldom  attended  by  them.  For  this  laxity 
a  double  reason  exists:  First,  immorality  in  men  is 
not  looked  upon  as  contrary  to  its  discipline.  Second, 
through  woman  having  been  trained  to  a  more  sensi- 
tive conscience  than  man,  the  confessional  wrests 
secrets  from  her  lips,  which  gives  the  church  knowl- 
edge of  all  it  wishes  to  learn  in  regard  to  the  family. 
No  more  certain  system  could  have  been  devised  for 
the  destruction  of  woman's  self-respect  than  the  one  re- 
quiring penance  from  her  for  sins  the  church  passes 
lightly  over  in  man.  Nor  would  penance  of  this  character 
be  demanded  from  women  were  the  offices  of  the  church 
open  to  her  the  same  as  to  man.  No  greater  crime 
against  humanity  has  ever  been  known  than  the  divis- 
ion of  morality  into  two  codes,  the  strict  for  woman, 
the  lax  for  man.  Nor  has  woman  been  the  sole  suf- 
ferer from  this  creation  of  Two  Moral  Codes  within 
the  Christian  Church.  Through  it  man  has  lost  fine 
discrimination  between  good  and  evil,  and  the  Church 
itself  as  the  originator  of  this  distinction  in  sin  upon 
the  trend  of  sex,  has  become  the  creator  and  sustainer 
of  injustice,  falsehood  and  the  crimes  into  which  its 
priests  have  most  deeply  sunk.  Nor  is  this  condi- 
tion of  the  past.  As  late  as  the  fall  of  1892  a  number 
of  articles  appeared  in  Canadian  papers  openly  accus- 
ing   the   catholic    priesthood  of    that  province  of  the 


IIO  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

grossest  immorality.108  That  priestly  celibacy  yet 
continues  in  the  Romish  Church  is  not  a  subject  of 
surprise,  when  we  realize  the  immense  power  and 
wealth  it  has  been  enabled  to  secure  through  its 
means;  but  it  is  one  of  astonishment,  carrying  with  it 
a  premonition  of  danger,  that  we  now  see  a  similar 
tendency  in  the  ritualistic  portion  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  both  in  England  and  the  United  States.  The 
evils  of  monasticism,  although  less  potent  than  during 
the  middle  ages,  are  still  great,  and  in  finding  entrance 
into  Protestant  denominations  are  a  fresh  warning  of 
their  dangerous  tendency.  The  experience  of  the  past 
should  not  appeal  to  us  in  vain.  We  have  noticed 
the  perils  to  society  arising  from  those  classes  of  per- 
sons who,  under  plea  of  religion,  evade  the  duties  of 
family  and  social  life.  No  crime  against  the  world 
can  be  greater  than  the  deliberate  divestment  of  re- 
sponsibility by  one's  self,  because  tired  of  the  warfare 
of  life,  that  struggle  which  comes  to  every  human 
being;  the  becoming  "fascinated  with  the  conceptions 
of  an  existence"  outside  of  ordinary  cares;  and  the  en- 

108.  Too  long  have  the  people  out  of  respect  for  the  church,  maintained 
silence  in  the  presence  of  gross  abuses,  while  their  families  have  been  ruined.  I 
am  a  husband  and  a  father,  and  I  do  not  wish  the  honor  of  my  name  and  my 
family  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  a  wolf  who  may  introduce  himself  with  the  viaticum 
in  his  hands.  I  am  a  father,  and  I  do  not  wish  that  the  sacred  candor  of  my  child 
should  be  exposed  to  the  lecherous  attempts  of  a  wretch  in  a  soutane.  The  re- 
ligious authorities  are  on  the  eve  of  witnessing  honest  men  follow  their  wives,  their 
daughters,  and  even  their  little  boys  to  the  confessional,  to  assure  themselves  if 
the  hand  that  holds  there  the  balance  of  divine  justice  is  the  hand  of  a  respectable 
man  or  the  hand  of  a  blackguard  who  should  receive  the  lash  in  public  with  his 
neck  in  the  pillory.—  Letter  from  a  gentleman. 

A  recent  article  in  the  Canada  "Review"  asks  if  after  giving  to  the  clergy 
riches,  respect  and  the  highest  positions,  it  is  too  much  to  ask  that  they  should 
leave  to  the  people  their  wives?  Our  wives  and  daughters  whom  they  steal  from 
ns  by  the  aid  of  religion,  and  more  especially  of  the  confessional.  An  immediate, 
firm  and  vigorous  reform  is  needed.  Our  wives  and  daughters  must  be  left  alone. 
Let  the  clergy  keep  away  from  the  women,  and  religion  and  the  Catholics  will  be 
better  off.  This  must  be  done  and  at  one*.— Montreal  Correspondence  of  the 
Toronto  Mail,  September  15,  189a. 


CELIBACY  III 

trance  into  an  order  in  which  one's  own  personal 
responsibility  is  largely  surrendered  to  others  is  not 
alone  a  crime  against  the  state,  but  a  sin  against 
one's  own  self  and  against  humanity.  An  order  which 
thereafter  assumes  the  task  of  directing  the  thoughts 
and  lives  of  its  members  into  a  channel  of  "repose 
and  contentment"  as  certain  protestant  orders  do,  is 
one  of  the  dangerous  religious  elements  of  the  present 
day.  No  crime  against  one's  self  or  against  society 
can  be  greater  than  this.  In  the  Ritualistic  Episco- 
pal Church  are  to  be  found  monks  and  sisterhoods 
upon  the  celibate  plan,  confessors  and  penance,  all  of 
them  primal  elements  in  moral  and  spiritual  degrada- 
tion. If  religion  has  a  lesson  to  teach  mankind,  it  is 
that  of  personal  responsibility;  it  is  that  of  the  worth 
and  duty  of  the  individual;  it  is  that  each  human 
being  is  alone  accountable  for  his  or  her  course  in  life; 
it  is  the  lesson  of  the  absolute  equality  of  each  human 
being  with  every  other  human  being  in  relation  to 
these  cardinal  points.  The  lesson  should  have  been 
learned  ere  this,  that  ecclesiastical  pretense  of  divinely 
appointed  power  has  ever  made  the  priesthood  arro- 
gant, coarse  and  tyrannical;  the  male  laity  dependent 
and  dissimulating;  woman,  self-distrustful  and  timor- 
ous, believing  in  the  duty  of  humiliation  and  self-sacri- 
fice; that  her  life  is  not  to  be  lived  primarily  for  her- 
self alone,  but  that  her  very  right  to  existence  is  de- 
pendent upon  the  benefit  thereby  to  accrue  to  some 
other  person.  To-day,  as  of  old,  the  underlying  idea 
of  monasticism,  of  "brotherhoods,"  "sisterhoods,"  and 
their  ilk  even  in  Protestant  denominations,  is  the 
divine  authority  of  some  priestly  superior,  and  that 
the  power  of  remitting  sins  inheres  in  some  system 
under  control  of    some    priest.     The  Ritualistic  party 


112  WOMAN,     CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  the  Episcopal  Church,  equally  with  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  makes  frequent  reference  to  these 
words  of  Christ— St.  John  XX,  XXIII— "Whatever 
sins  you  remit  they  are  remitted  unto  them,  and  what- 
soever sins  you  retain  are  retained,"  thus  premising 
the  divine  power  of  the  priesthood. 


CHAPTER  III. 

CANON    LAW. 

The  earliest  Saxon  laws  were  almost  entirely  eccle- 
siastical,1 their  basis  seeming  to  have  been  payment 
of  titles  to  the  Church  and  support  of  the  pope 
through  what  was  known  as  the  "hearth  penny"  to  St. 
Peter.  Marriage  was  by  no  means  allowed  to  escape 
general  ecclesiastical  control,  its  legitimacy  being 
made  to  depend  upon  the  sanction  and  services  of  a 
priest.8  This  we  learn  from  Reeves,  whose  authority 
is  indisputable,8  therefore  we  discover  that  even  long 
before  marriage  was  constituted  one  of  the  sacraments, 
celibacy  or  the  confessional  established,  the  Church 
had  perceived  the  great  increase  in  its  authority  to  be 
brought  about  by  gaining  control  of  the  marriage 
ceremony  and  making  its  legitimacy  depend  upon  the 
services    of     a    priest.      This     was    a    material    step 

i.  Maine  says  the  bodies  of  customary  law  which  were  built  up  over  Europe 
were  in  all  matters  of  first  principles  under  ecclesiastical  influence,  but  the 
particular  application  of  a  principle  once  accepted  were  extremely  various. 

2.  The  Council  held  at  Winchester  in  time  of  Archbishop  Le  Franc  contained 
a  constitution  that  a  marriage  without  the  benediction  of  a  priest  should  not  be 
deemed  a  legitimate  marriage.  Ecclesiastical  law  as  allowed  in  this  country 
(Great  Britain),  from  earliest  times  the  presence  of  a  priest  was  required  to  con 
stitute  a  legal  marriage.     Reeves. — History  of English  Law. 

3.  Reeves  History  of  English  Law  is  a  full  and  comprehensive  history  of  the 
English  law.  Accurate  and  judicious  as  well  as  full.  Lord  Mansfield  is  said  to 
have  advised  its  author.  In  this  work  the  student  is  presented  with  all  that  is 
necessary  that  he  should  know  of  the  earliest  law  books.  Bracton,  Glanville 
and  Fleta  carefully  collected  and  presented.  Reeves  History  of  English  Law, 
says  Chancellor  Kent,  contains  the  best  account  that  we  have  of  the  progress  of 
the  law  from  the  time  of  the  Saxons  to  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  Sherwood.— Pro- 
fessional Ethics. 

113 


114  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

towards  the  subjugation  of  mankind;  one  whose  di;e 
consequences  have  not  yet  received  due  consideration. 
When  Rome  became  a  Christian  State,  and  the  phal- 
lic cross  triumphed  over  the  gods  and  goddesses  of 
old,  the  condition  of  woman  under  the  civil  law  be- 
came more  degraded.  The  change  from  ancient  civil- 
ization to  that  renewed  barbarism  at  an  early  age  of 
the  Christian  era,  which  so  many  writers  note  without 
perceiving  its  cause,  is  to  be  found  in  the  low  con- 
ception of  womanhood  inculcated  by  the  Church. 
Ignorance,  superstition,  falsehood  and  forgery  united  in 
creating  new  codes  of  law,  new  customs  of  society, 
new  habits  of  thought,  which,  having  for  centuries 
been  imposed  upon  mankind  by  the  united  force  of  the 
Church  and  the  State,  still  continue  their  impress  upon 
modern  life  and  law. 

Among  general  canons  we  find  that  "No  woman  may 
approach  the  altar."  "A  woman  may  not  baptize  with- 
out extreme  necessity."  "Woman  may  not  receive  the 
Eucharist  under  a  black  veil."  "Woman  may  not  re- 
ceive the  Eucharist  in  morbo  suo  menstrule" 

At  the  Synod  or  Council  of  Elvira,4  305  or  306, 
several  restrictive  canons  were  formulated  against 
woman.  Under  Canon  81,  she  was  forbidden  to  write 
in  her  own  name  to  lay  christians,  but  only  in  the 
name  of  her  husband.  Women  were  not  to  receive 
letters  of  friendship  from  any  one  addressed  only  to 
themselves. 

From  the  commencement  of  the  fifth  century,  the 
Christian  clergy  acquired  a  powerful  influence  in  Rome. 
Bishops  and  priests  were  the  municipal  magistrates 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  of  which  little  now  remained 
except  its  municipal  government;  thus  the  Church  in 

4.  Hefele's,  Acts  of  Council*, 


CANON    LAW  115 

reality  became  Rome,  and  Rome  the  Church.  It  has 
been  declared  difficult  to  fix  with  precision  the  period 
at  which  ecclesiastics  first  began  to  claim  exemption 
from  civil  jurisdiction.  The  Synod  of  Paris,  615, 
seems  to  have  secured  to  the  clergy  the  privilege  of 
being  brought  before  mixed  tribunals  in  all  cases 
which  had  theretofore  belonged  to  the  civil  judge  alone. 
Bishops  acquired  greater  power  from  having  an  over- 
sight over  the  whole  administration  of  justice  com- 
mitted to  them,  while  their  spiritual  judgments  were 
rendered  more  effective  by  the  addition  of  excommu- 
nication to  civil  punishments.  The  State,  at  first 
holding  repression  over  the  Church,  added  to  its  pow- 
ers by  relieving  the  clergy  from  all  civil  duties,5  thus 
tending  to  make  of  them  a  body  exterior'  to  the  civil 
government.  This  division  was  farther  increased 
through  the  emperors  giving  confirmation  to  the  de- 
cisions pronounced  by  bishops  in  ecclesiastical  affairs, 
and  also  when  they  were  chosen  umpires  in  civil  suits; 
the  tendency  of  this  action  was  towards  the  creation 
of  an  ecclesiastical  law  with  separate  powers  from  the 
civil  law.  Another  step  towards  the  separation  of 
civil  from  ecclesiastical  law  and  the  supremacy  of  the 
latter,  was  made  when  in  cases  of  discipline  the 
clergy  were  allowed  to  come  under  the  authority  and 
supervision  of  the  Spiritual  Courts.* 

As  soon  as  Christianity  became  the  religion  of  the 
State,  this  power  was  still  farther  increased  by  the 
permission  accorded  ecclesiastics  to  accept  gifts,  in- 
herit and  hold  property;  the  purity  of  clerical  motives 
being   thereby    greatly  lessened,  as  covetous  and    un- 

5.  Church  and  priestly  property  is  still  untaxed  in  the  United  States.  At  an 
early  day  the  clergy  were  not  required  to  sit  on  juries  nor  permitted  to  cast  a 
vote. 

6.  Giessler,  Ecclesiastical  History, 


Il6  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

scrupulous  persons  were  forthwith  attracted  to  this 
profession.  The  law  of  tithes  was  introduced  by 
Charlemagne,  and  his  edicts  largely  increased  clerical 
power.  The  compilation  of  a  Code  of  Canon  Law  was 
begun  as  early  as  the  ninth  century,7  by  which  period 
the  olden  acknowledged  rights  of  the  clergy,  those  of 
superintending  morals  and  interference  on  behalf  of 
the  unfortunate,  had  largely  been  lost  sight  of,  or 
diverted  from  their  proper  course  by  a  system  of  eccle- 
siastical tyranny  which  created  an  order  of  morals, 
whose  sole  design  was  that  of  building  up  priestly 
power. 

The  complete  inferiority  and  subordination  of  the 
female  sex  was  maintained  both  by  civil  and  common 
law.  It  was  a  principle  of  common  law  that  sons 
should  be  admitted  to  an  inheritance  before  daugh- 
ters.8 This  distinction  created  by  the  Church  in  the 
interests  of  the  class  which  was  alone  admitted  to  the 
priesthood,  thus  placing  the  possession  of  wealth  in 
the  hands  of  man,  did  much  towards  keeping  woman 
in  a  subordinate  condition.  In  accordance  with  nat- 
ural law,  the  person  not  owning  property  is  less  inter- 
ested in  the  welfare  of  the  State  than  the  one  possess- 
ing it,  a  denial  of  the  rights  of  ownership  acting  pre- 
judicially upon  the  individual. 

7.  Doctrines  in  the  Canon  Law  most  favorable  to  the  power  of  the  clergy  are 
founded  in  ignorance,  or  supported  by  fraud  and  forgery,  of  which  a  full  account 
is  found  in  Gerard.  See  Mem.  de  VAcad.  des  Inscript.,  Tom  18,  p.  46.  Also 
Voltaire's  essay  upon  general  history. 

8.  "Whenever  Canon  Law  has  been  the  basis  of  legislation,  we  find  the  laws 
of  succession  sacrificing  the  interests  of  daughters  and  wives."  "Du  Cange,  in 
his  Glossary,  voc  Casta  Christianitatis,  has  collected  most  of  the  causes  with 
respect  to  which  the  clergy  arrogated  an  exclusive  jurisdiction,  and  Giannone, 
in  the  Civil  History  of  Naples^  lib.  19,  sec.  3,  has  arranged  these  under  proper 
heads  scrutinizing  the  pretensions  of  the  church." 


CANON    LAW  1 17 

Ecclesiastical  or  Canon  Law9  made  its  greatest 
encroachments  at  the  period  when  Chivalry10  was  at 
its  height;  the  outward  show  of  respect  and  honor  to 
woman  under  chivalry  keeping  pace  in  its  false  pre- 
tence with  the  destruction  of  her  legal  rights.  The 
general  conception  in  regard  to  woman  was  so  degrad- 
ed at  this  period  that  a  "Community  of  Women"  was 
proposed,  to  whom  all  men  should  act  in  the  relation  of 
husbands.11  This  plan  was  advocated  by  Jean  de 
Meung,  the  "Poet  of  Chivalry,"  in  his  famous  Roman 
de  la  Rose,  Christine  of  Pisa,  a  woman  of  learning 
and  remarkable  force  of  character,  the  first  strictly 
literary  woman  of  western  Europe,  wrote  a  work  in 
defense  of  her  sex  against  the  general  libidinous  char- 
acter of  the  age.12  Her  opposition  to  the  debasing 
theories  of  the  "Romance"  marks  the  later  period  of 
woman's  entrance  into  literature,  and  is  an  era  from 
which  dates  the  modern  intellectual  development  of 
Europe.13     Efforts  to  utterly  crush  the  moral  rectitude 

9.  "Canons  were  made  from  time  to  time  to  supply  the  defects  of  the  common 
law  of  the  church;  so  were  statutes  added  to  enforce  both  Common  and  Canon 
Law.  The  greater  part  of  the  statutes  made  before  the  Reformation,  which  con- 
corns  the  church  and  clergy,  are  directly  leveled  against  violence  committed 
against  the  possession  of  persons  by  the  minister  or  the  king,  and  against  the 
encroachments  of  the  Temporal  Courts  upon  the  spiritual  jurisdiction/' 

10.  *  Phantastic  romanticists  and  calculating  persons  have  endeavored  to 
represent  this  period  as  the  age  of  morality  and  sincere  reverence  for  woman. 
*  *  *  The  'Service  of  Love'  preached  by  French,  German,  and  Italian  knights, 
was  supposed  to  prove  the  high  respect  paid  to  the  women  of  that  day.  On  the 
contrary,  this  period  succeeded  in  destroying  the  little  respect  for  the  female  sex 
which  existed  at  its  commencement.  The  knights  both  in  town  and  country  were 
mostly  coarse,  licentious  men.  *  *  *  The  chronicles  of  the  times  swarm  with 
tales  of  rape  and  violence  on  the  part  of  nobles  in  the  country,  and  still  more  in 
the  towns  where  they  were  exclusive  rulers  up  to  the  XIII.  and  XIV.  centuries, 
while  those  subjected  to  this  degraded  treatment  were  powerless  to  obtain 
redress.  In  the  towns  the  nobles  sat  on  the  magistrates  bench,  and  in  the 
country  criminal  jurisdiction  was  in  the  hands  of  the  lord  of  the  manor,  squire  or 
bishop." 

xi.  The  first  article  of  the  famous  Code  of  Love  was  "Marriage  is  not  a  legiti- 
mate excuse  against  love." 

12.  This  was  Christine's  first  work.  Her  success  was  so  <*reat  that  she  sup- 
ported a  family  of  six  persons  by  her  pen. 

13.  Wright.     Womankind  in  Eurofe. 


Il8  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  women  through  the  adoption  of  those  base  ideas  of 
phallic  origin,  having  been  the  systematic  course  of  the 
Church,  the  State  and  society  through  many  hundred 
years,  it  is  a  most  notable  proof  of  her  innate  disbelief  in 
this  teaching,  that  woman's  first  literary  work  of 
modern  times  was  written  in  opposition  to  such  a  pow- 
erfully sustained  theory  as  to  her  innate  depravity. 
Christine  asserted  the  common  humanity  of  woman, 
entirely  repudiating  the  sensual  ideas  of  the  times. 

To  the  credit  of  mankind  it  must  be  recorded  that 
the  laity  did  not  unresistingly  yield  to  priestly  power, 
but  made  many  attempts  to  take  their  temporal  con- 
cerns from  under  priestly  control.  But  under  the 
general  paucity  of  education,  and  the  abnegation  of 
the  will  so  sedulously  inculcated  by  the  Church  as  the 
supreme  duty  of  the  laity,  its  dread  power  brought  to 
bear  in  the  enforcement  of  its  teaching  by  terrifying 
threats  of  excommunication  and  future  eternal  torment, 
the  rights  of  even  the  male  portion  of  the  people 
were  gradually  lost.  The  control  of  the  priesthood 
over  all  things  of  a  temporal  as  well  as  of  a  spiritual 
nature,  tended  to  make  them  a  distinct  body  from  the 
laity.  In  pursuance  of  its  aims  for  universal  dominion, 
the  Church  saw  the  necessity  of  assuming  control  of 
temporal  affairs.  Rights  were  divided  into  those  per- 
taining to  persons  and  things;  the  rights  of  persons 
belonged  to  the  priesthood  alone,  but  inasmuch  as 
every  man,  whatever  his  condition,  could  become  a 
priest,  and  no  woman  however  learned  or  pious  or 
high  in  station  could  be  admitted  to  its  ranks,  the 
whole  tendency  of  ecclesiastical  law  was  to  divide 
mankind  into  a  holy  or  divine  sex,  and  an  unholy  or 
impious  one.14     Thus  Canon  Law  still  farther  separated 

14.  "The  Fathers  seem  to  have  thought  dissolution  of  marriage  was  not  lawful  on 
account  of  the  adultery  of  the  husband,  but  that  it  was  not  absolutely  unlawful 
(or  a  husband  whose  wife  had  committed  adultery  to  re-marry." 


CANON    LAW  Iig 

those  whose  interests  were  the  same,  creating  an 
antagonism  in  the  minds  of  all  men  against  all  women, 
which  bearing  upon  all  business  of  ordinary  life  be- 
tween men  and  women,  fell  with  its  greatest  weight 
upon  women.  It  corrupted  the  Common  Law  of 
England,  and  perverted  the  civil  codes  of  other  na- 
tions. Under  Canon  Law  wives  were  deprived  of  the 
control  of  both  person  and  property,  while  sisters 
were  not  allowed  to  inherit  with  brothers;  property, 
according  to  old  ecclesiastical  language,  going  "to  the 
worthiest  of  blood."  Blackstone  acknowledges  that 
this  distinction  between  brothers  and  sisters  reflects 
shame  upon  England,  and  was  no  part  of  the  old 
Roman  law,  under  which  the  children  of  a  family  in- 
herited equally  without  distinction  of  sex.15  It  was  as 
late  as  1879  before  the  Canon  Law  in  regard  to  the  sole 
inheritance  of  sons  was  repealed  in  one  of  the  Swiss 
Cantons.  The  influence  of  this  law  in  creating  selfish- 
ness was  manifested  by  the  opposition  it  met,  brothers 
piteously  asserting  ruin  to  themselves  by  this  act  of 
justice  to  their  sisters.  Whenever  the  Canon  Law  is 
analyzed  it  is  found  destructive  to  the  higher  moral 
sentiments  of  humanity.  A  woman  was  prohibited  the 
priesthood,  and  as  the  property  of  men  entering  orders 
became  forfeited  to  the  Church,  the  real  intent  of  this 
law — that  of  obtaining  control  of  property — which 
otherwise  might  have  escaped  the  grasping  hand  of 
the  church,  is  easily  discernible.  From  its  first  theory 
of  woman's  inferiority  to  its  last  struggle  for  power  at 
the  present  day,  the  influence  and  action  of  the  Patri- 
archate is  clearly  seen.  The  touch  of  the  Church  upon 
family  life,  inheritance  and  education,  increased  the 
power  of  the  Patriarchate. 

15.  The  preference  of  males  over  females  in  succession  was  totally  unknown  to 
the  laws  of  Rome.  Brothers  and  sisters  were  entitled  to  equal  parts  of  the  inher- 
itance.   Blackstone.— Commentaries. 


120  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

As  celibacy  proved  a  lucrative  method  of  bringing 
wealth  into  its  coffers,  so  marriage  was  early  made  a 
source  of  revenue  to  the  Church,  Canon  Law  creat- 
ing it  a  sacrament  to  be  performed  at  the  church 
door.  Owing,  however,  to  the  innate  sinfulness  of 
marriage,  this  sacrament  was  not  for  many  years 
allowed  to  take  place  within  the  sacred  building  dedi- 
cated to  God,  and  deemed  too  holy  to  permit  the  en- 
trance of  a  woman  within  its  sacred  walls  at  certain 
periods  of  her  life.  In  order  to  secure  full  control  of 
this  relation  marriage  unblessed  by  a  priest  was  de- 
clared to  be  concubinage,  and  carried  with  it  depriva- 
tion of  church  privileges,  which  the  ignorance  of  the 
people  held  to  be  of  vital  importance.  In  entering 
this  relation  the  wife  was  compelled  to  relinquish  her 
name,  her  property,  the  control  of  her  person,  her 
own  sacred  individuality,  and  to  promise  obedience  to 
her  husband  in  all  things.  Certain  hours  of  the  day 
to  suit  the  convenience  of  priests  were  set  aside  as 
canonical,  after  which  time  no  marriage  could  be  cele- 
brated. 

Nor  has  this  priestly  control  of  marriage  been  con- 
fined to  the  Catholics  alone.  Similar  laws  were  ex- 
tant after  the  Reformation.  In  England  1603,  Canon 
62  instituted  that  under  penalty  of  suspension  people 
could  not  marry  except  between  the  hours  of  eight 
and  twelve  in  the  forenoon,  nor  was  marriage  then 
allowed  in  any  private  place  but  must  be  performed  at 
the  church  door.1*  The  rapid  growth  of  the  Canon 
Law  in  England  must  be  ascribed  to  avarice;  the 
denial  to  wives  of  any  right  of  property  in  the  marital 
union  being  an  example.     At  this    period  Canon  Law 

16.  No  marriage  could  take  place  after  12  m.,  which  is  even  now  the  rule  of  the 
English  Established  Church.  The  decrees  of  the  Plenary  Council,  Baltimore 
1884,  tend  to  the  establishment  of  similar  regulations  in  our  own  country. 


CANON    LAW  121 

began  to  take  cognizance  of  crimes,  establishing  an 
equivalent  in  money  for  every  species  of  wrong. doing. 
The  Church  not  only  remitted  penalty  for  crimes  al- 
ready committed,  but  sold  indulgences  for  the  commis- 
sion of  new  ones.  Its  touch  soon  extended  to  all 
relations  of  life.  Marriages  within  the  seventh  degree 
were  forbidden  by  the  Church  as  incestuous,17  but  to 
those  able  to  pay  for  such  indulgences  a  dispensation 
for  such  "incestuous"  marriage  was  readily  granted. 
No  crime  so  great  it  could  not  be  condoned  for  money. 
Thus  through  Canon  Law  was  seen  the  anomaly  of 
legal  marriage  between  the  laity  pronounced  concubin- 
age, while  the  concubines  of  priests  were  termed 
"wives."  As  soon  as  the  legality  of  marriage  was  made 
dependent  upon  priestly  sanction  the  door  of  gross 
immorality  was  widely  opened.18  All  restrictions  con- 
nected with  this  relation  were  made  to  fall  with 
heaviest  weight  upon  woman.  Husbands  were  secured 
the  right  of  separation  for  causes  not  freeing  wives; 
even  the  adultery  of  the  husband  was  not  deemed  suffi- 
cient cause  unless  he  brought  his  mistress  into  the 
same  house  with  his  wife.19  Church  and  State  sus- 
tained each  other.  Conviction  of  the  husband  for  a 
capital  crime  gave  the  wife  no  release  from  the  mar- 
riage bond,  yet  in  case  of  the  husband's  treason,  his  in- 
nocent wife  and  children  were'robbed  of  all  share  in  the 
estate  of  the  criminal  husband  and  father  and  were  re- 
duced to  beggary,  his   estate  escheating    to  the  State. 

17.  The  New  Testaments  of  sixty  years  since,  contained  a  list  of  relatives  com- 
mencing with  grandfather  and  grandmother,  whom  a  man  and  woman  might  not 
marry. 

18.  The  policy  of  the  church  was  to  persuade  mankind  that  the  cohabitation  of 
a  man  and  woman  was  in  itself  unholy,  and  that  nothing  but  a  religious  bond  or 
sacrament  could  render  it  inoffensive  in  the  eyes  of  God.  Pike.—  History  of 
Crime  in  England,  x,  9a 

19.  This  law  held  good  in  Protestant  England  until  within  the  last  decade. 


122  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

As  under  civil  law  so  under  ecclesiastical,  the  Church 
recognized  but  slight  difference  in  the  guilt  of  a  con- 
tumacious husband  and  that  of  his  pious  wife  and 
children.20  It  was  a  principle  of  the  Church  that  the  in. 
nocent  must  surfer  for  the  guilty,  especially  when  the  in- 
nocent were  women  and  children  powerless  to  aid  them- 
selves. At  its  every  step  Canon  Law  injured  woman. 
The  clergy  assuming  to  be  an  order  of  spiritual  beings, 
claimed  immunity  from  civil  law  and  allowed  for 
themselves  an  "arrest  of  judgment"  ultimately  enlarged 
so  as  to  include  all  male  persons  who  could  read  and 
write.  This  arrest  known  as  "benefit  of  clergy"  was 
denied  to  all  women,  who  were  liable  to  sentence  of 
death  for  the  first  crime  of  simple  larceny,  bigamy, 
etc."  Men  who  by  virtue  of  sex  could  become  priests 
if  able  to  read,  were  for  the  same  crimes  punished  by 
simple  branding  in  the  hand,  or  a  few  months  impris- 
onment, while  a  woman  was  drawn  and  burned  alive. 
Did  not  history  furnish  much  proof  of  this  character  it 
would  be  impossible  to  believe  that  such  barbaric  in- 
justice was  part  of  English  law  down  to  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  Woman  first  rendered  ineli- 
gible to  the  priesthood,  was  then  punished  for  this 
ineligibility. 

Blackstone  recognizes  as  among  the  remarkable 
legal  events  of  the  kingdom,  the  great  alteration  in 
the  laws  through  the  separation  of  ecclesiastical  courts 
from  the  civil.  Matrimonial  causes,  or  injuries  respect- 
ing the  rights  of  marriage  are  recognized  by  him  as 
quite  an  undisturbed  branch  of  ecclesiastical  jurisdic- 
tion, from  the  Church  having  so  early    converted    this 

20.  The  church  visited  its  penalties  upon  the  innocent  as  well  as  guilty;  when 
any  man  remained  under  excommunication  two  months,  his  wife  and  children 
were  interdicted  and  deprived  of  all  doctrines  of  the  church  but  baptism  and 
repentance.     Lea. — Studies  in  Church  History. 

21.  In  England,  until  the  reign  of  William  and  Mary,  women  were  refused  the 
benefit  of  clergy. 


CANON    LAW  123 

contract  into  a  sacramental  ordinance.22  During 
many  centuries  education  was  denied  to  woman 
in  Christian  countries  for  reasons  connected  with  her 
ineligibility  to  the  priesthood.  The  art  of  reading 
is  by  scholars  believed  to  have  been  one  of  the  ancient 
mysteries  taught  at  Eleusis  and  other  olden  temples; 
learning, then,  as  at  later  periods,  was  in  the  hands  of 
priests ;  therefore  the  fact  of  being  able  to  read  was 
synonymous  with  the  right  of  entering  the  priesthood. 
This  right  appertained  to  women  in  many  ancient  na- 
tions even  under  the  Patriarchate.  Higgins  shows  that 
the  word  Liber  from  which  our  words  liberty,  freedom, 
are  derived,  is  one  and  the  same  as  liber,  a  book,  and 
had  close  connection  with  the  intellectual,  literary, 
and  priestly  class.  As  under  Christian  doctrine  the 
priesthood  was  denied  to  woman,  so  under  the  same 
rule  learning  was  prohibited  to  her.22  To  permit 
woman's  education  under  Christianity  would  have 
been  a  virtual  concession  of    her    right  to  the    priest- 

22.  In  the  hands  of  such  able  politicians  it  (marriage),  soon  became  an  engine 
of  great  importance  to  the  papal  scheme  of  an  universal  monarchy  over  Chris- 
tendom. The  innumerable  canonical  impediments  that  were  invented  and  occa- 
sionally dispensed  with  by  the  Holy  See,  not  only  enriched  the  coffers  of  the 
church,  but  give  it  a  vast  ascendant  over  persons  of  all  denominations,  whose 
marriages  were  sanctioned  or  repudiated,  their  issue  legitimated  or  bastardized 
*  *  *  according  to  the  humor  or  interest  of  the  reigning  pontiff.— Commen- 
taries 3,  92. 

23.  The  word  Liber,  free,  the  solar  Phre  of  Egypt,  and  Liber,  a  book,  being  as 
has  been  shown,  closely  connected,  the  bookish  men  of  Bac,  Boc,  Bacchus,  were 
comparatively  free  from  the  rule  of  the  warrior  class,  both  in  civil  and  military 
point  of  view,  and  thence  arises  our  benefit  0/  clergy.  If  the  benefit  of  clergy  de- 
pends upon  a  statute,  it  had  probably  been  obtained  by  the  priests  to  put  their 
privilege  out  of  doubt.  It  has  been  a  declaratory  statute,  although,  perhaps, 
every  man  who  was  initiated  could  not  read  and  write,  yet  I  believe  every  man 
who  could  read  and  write  was  initiated,  these  arts  being  taught  to  the  initiated 
only  in  very  early  times.  It  has  been  said  that  the  privilege  of  clergy  was 
granted  to  encourage  learning.  I  believe  it  was  used  as  a  test,  as  a  proof  that  a 
man  was  of,  or  immediately  belonging  to,  the  sacred  tribe,  and  therefore  exempt 
from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  court  in  which  he  had  been  tried.  If  he  were 
accused  he  said  nothing;  if  found  guilty  he  pleaded  his  orders  and  his  reading. 
I  have  little  doubt  that  the  knowledge  of  reading  and  letters  were  a  masonic 
secret  for  many  generations,  and  that  it  formed  part  of  the  mysterious  knowledge 
of  Eleusis  and  other  temples.— Anacalypsis,  2,  271-2. 


124  "WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

hood.  In  not  allowing  her  "benefit  of  clergy"  the 
priests  were  but  consistent  with  themselves  and  their 
pretensions  as  to  the  superior  holiness  of  the  male 
sex.  That  a  woman  should  be  burned  alive  for  a  crime 
whose  only  punishment  for  a  man  was  a  few  months 
imprisonment,  was  in  unison  with  the  whole  teaching 
of  the  Christian  Church  regarding  woman.  Under 
Canon  Law  many  of  the  shields  theretofore  thrown 
about  women  were  removed.  Punishment  for  crimes 
against  them  lessened,  while  crimes  committed  by  them 
were  more  severely  punished.  Rape,  which  in  early 
English  history  was  termed  felony,  its  penalty,  death, 
was  regarded  in  a  less  heinous  light  under  clerical  rule. 
Under  the  political  constitutions  of  the  Saxons, 
bishops  had  seats  in  the  national  council  and  all  laws 
were  prefaced  by  a  formal  declaration  of  their  consent. 
By  their  influence  it  became  a  general  law  that  a 
woman  could  never  take  of  an  inheritance  with  a  man, 
unless  perhaps  by  the  particular  and  ancient  customs 
of  some  cities  or  towns;  while  daughters  at  a  father's 
death  could  be  left  totally  unprovided  for.  A  law  was 
enacted  in  the  reign  of  Edward  VI.  that  no  son  should 
be  passed  over  in  his  father's  will  unless  disinherited 
in  plain  terms  and  a  just  cause  given.  In  case  of 
daughters,  sex  was  deemed  "a  just  cause"  for  leaving 
them  in  poverty.  The  earlier  laws  of  the  Danish 
Knut,  or  Canute,  show  that  the  estate  was  then  divided 
among  all  the  children.  Under  Canon  Law,  the  testi- 
mony of  a  woman  was  not  received  in  a  court  of  jus- 
tice. She  was  depicted  by  the  Church  as  the  source 
of  all  evil,   the  mother  of  every  ill.24     Legislation  had 

04.  Woman  was  represented  as  the  door  of  hell,  as  the  mother  of  all  human 
ills.  She  should  be  ashamed  of  the  very  thought  that  she  is  a  woman.  She 
should  live  in  continual  penance  on  account  of  the  curses  she  had  brought  upon 
the  world.  She  should  be  ashamed  of  her  dress,  for  it  is  the  memorial  of  her 
fall.  She  should  especially  be  ashamed  of  her  beauty,  for  it  is  the  most  potent 
instrument  of  the  demon  *  *  *  Women  were  even  forbidden  by  a  provincial 
council,  in  the  sixth  century,  on  account  of  their  impurity,  to  receive  the 
eucharist  in  their  naked  hands.  Their  essentially  subordinate  position  was  con- 
tinually maintained.     Lecky.—  Hist.  European  Morals, 


CANON    LAW  125 

the  apparent  aim  of  freeing  the  clergy  from  all  respon- 
sibility to  the  civil  or  moral  law,  and  placing  the 
weight  of  every  sin  or  crime  upon  woman. 

A  council  at  Tivoli  in  the  Soissainanes,  A.  D.  909, 
presided  over  by  twelve  bishops,  promulgated  a  Canon 
requiring  the  oath  of  seven  persons  to  convict  a  priest 
with  having  lived  with  a  woman;  if  their  oath  failed  of 
clearing  him  he  was  allowed  to  justify  himself  upon 
his  sole  oath.  Under  Canon  Law  a  woman  could  not 
bring  an  accusation  unless  prosecuted  for  an  injury 
done  to  herself.  It  is  less  than  thirty  years  since  this 
law  was  extant  in  Scotland;  and  as  late  as  1878,  that 
through  the  influence  of  Signor  Morelli  the  Italian 
Parliament  repealed  the  old  restriction  existant  in  that 
country  regarding  woman's  testimony.  Under  Canon 
Law  a  woman  could  not  be  witness  in  ecclesiastical 
or  criminal  suits,  nor  attest  a  will.85  To  cast  doubts 
upon  a  person's  word  is  indicative  of  the  most  supreme 
contempt,  importing  discredit  to  the  whole  character. 
That  a  woman  was  not  allowed  to  attest  a  will,  nor 
become  a  witness  in  ecclesiastical  suits,  implied  great 
degradation  and  is  a  very  strong  proof  of  the  low 
esteem  in  which  woman  was  held  both  by  State  and 
Church.  That  a  priest  could  clear  himself  upon  his  own 
unsubstantiated  oath  is  equally  significative  of  the  re- 
spect in  which  this  office  was  held,  as  well  as  showing 
the  degree  in  which  all  law  was  made  to  shield  man 
and  degrade  woman.  When  we  find  the  oath  of  seven 
women  required  to  nullify  that  of  one  layman,  we  need 
no  stronger  testimony  as  to  woman's  inequality  before 
the  law.  Canonists  laid  down  the  law  for  all  matters 
of  a  temporal  nature  whether  civil  or  criminal.  The 
buying    and    selling    of    lands;  leasing,     mortgaging, 

25.  No  woman  can  witness  a  will  in  the  State  of  Louisiana  to-day. 


126  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

contracts;  the  descent  of  inheritance;  the  prosecution 
and  punishment  of  murder;  theft;  detection  of  thieves; 
frauds;  those  and  many  other  objects  of  temporal 
jurisdiction  were  provided  for  by  Canon  Law.  It  was 
intended  that  the  clergy  should  come  entirely  under 
its  action,  governed  as  a  distinct  people  from  the 
laity.  The  principal  efforts  of  the  Canon  Law  towards 
which  all  its  enactments  tended,  was  the  subordina- 
tion of  woman88  and  the  elevation  of  the  hierarchy. 
To  secure  these  two  ends  the  church  did  not  hesitate 
at  forgery.  For  many  hundred  years  a  collection  of 
Decretals,  or  what  were  claimed  as  decrees  of  the 
early  popes,  carried  great  authority,  although  later  in- 
vestigation has  proven  them  forgeries.27  Civil  as  well 
as  ecclesiastical  laws  were  forged  in  the  interest  of 
the  priesthood;  a  noted  instance,  was  the  once  famous 
law  of  Constantine  which  endowed  bishops  with  un- 
limited power,  giving  them  jurisdiction  in  all  kinds 
of  causes.  This  law  declared  that  whatever  is  deter- 
mined by  the  judgment  of  bishops  shall  always  be 
held  as  sacred  and  venerable,  and  that  in  all  kinds  of 
causes  whether  they  are  tried  according  to  the  pastoral 
or  civil  law  that  it  is  law  to  be  forever  observed  by 
all. 

The  famous  Seldon  known  as  the  "Light  of  England," 
declares  it  to  have  been  "a  prodigious  and  monstrous 
jurisdiction"  assumed  by  the  priestly  order,  by  means 


26.  Blackstone  says  whosoever  wishes  to  form  a  correct  idea  of  Canon  Law 
can  do  so  by  examining  it  in  regard  to  married  women.—  Commentaries. 

27.  Blondell,  a  learned  Protestant  who  died  in  1659,  fully  proved  Isidore's  col- 
lection of  the  Decretal  Epistles  of  the  popes  of  the  first  three  centuries,  to  be  all 
forged  and  a  shameless  imposture,  says  Collier 


CANON    LAW  127 

of  falsehood  and  forgery.28  The  two  classes  of  tem- 
poral affairs  that  Spiritual  Courts  especially  endeav- 
ored to  appropriate,  were  marriages,  and  wills,  with 
everything  bearing  upon  them.  In  these  the  greatest 
oppression  fell  upon  women.29  Canon  Law  gradually 
acquired  enormous  power  through  the  control  it 
gained  over  wills,  the  guardianship  of  orphans,  mar- 
riage, and  divorce.30  As  soon  as  ecclesiastical  courts 
were  divided  from  the  temporal  in  England,31 
a  new  set  of  principles  and  maxims  began  to  prevail. 
This  was  one  of  the  first  effects  of  the  Conquest,  but 
in  1272,  Robert  Kilmandy,  Dean  of  Canterbury,  gave 
directions  for  the  restoration  and  observation  of  the 
ancient  and  neglected  laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Courts; 
of  these  the  Court  of  Arches  was  one  of  the  most 
ancient.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  fix  the  date  of 
ecclesiastical  rule,  unless  indeed  we  go  back  to  the 
very  foundation  of  the  church.  As  noted,  the  early 
Saxons    were    largely   governed   by  their    priests.     In 

28.  The  famous  law  of  Constantine,  attached  to  the  Theodosian  Code,  by 
virtue  of  which  a  prodigious  and  monstrous  jurisdiction  was  formerly  attributed 
to  bishops,  or  to  the  hieratic  order,  though  in  reality  that  law  was  never  a  part  of 
the  aforesaid  code,  at  the  end  of  which  it  is  found.  Seldon.— Dissertation  on 
Fleta,  p.  10 1. 

At  time  of  Valentinian  neither  bishops  nor  the  Consistories  could,  without 
the  consent  of  the  contracting  lay  parties,  take  cognizance  of  their  causes.  *  *  * 
Because,  says  that  emperor,  it  is  evident  that  bishops  and  priests  have  no  court 
to  determine  the  laws  in,  neither  can  they  according  to  the  imperial  constitutions 
of  Arcadius  and  Honorius,  as  is  manifest  from  the  Theodosian  body,  judge  of  any 
other  matters  than  those  relating  to  religion.  Thus  the  aforesaid  Emperor 
Valentinian.  Neither  do  I  think  that  the  above  sanction  as  extravagant,  obtained 
a  place  at  the  end  of  the  Theodosian  Code,  or  was  under  the  title  of  Episcopis, 
by  any  other  manner  posted  into  my  manuscript,  than  by  the  frauds  and  deceits, 
constantly,  under  various  pretenses,  made  use  of  by  the  hieratical  orders,  who 
endeavored  to  shape  right  or  wrong,  according  to  the  custom  of  those  ages,  not  to 
mention  others,  sovereign  princes  and  republics  of  their  authority  and  legal 
power,  by  this  means  under  the  cloak  of  religion,  its  constant  pretext,  most 
strenuously  serving  their  own  ends  and  ambition. — Ibid,  107. 

29.  See  Reeves.— History  af  English  Law 

30.  Draper.— Conflict  0/  Science  and  Religion. 

31.  Reeves, 


128  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

615,  at  the  Paris  synod,  the  clergy  were  given  author- 
ity in  matters  theretofore  under  civil  power,  while  in 
England  we  find  priestly  power  to  have  been  great 
during  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries.  Bracton  sets 
the  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  between  the  middle  of 
the  twelfth  and  end  of  the  thirteenth  centuries  as  the 
period  when  this  power  took  its  greatest  strides.  At 
this  time  it  touched  upon  wills,  inheritance,  bequests, 
the  legitimacy  of  children,  the  marriage  relation,  and 
all  family  concerns,  having  broken  over  many  securi- 
ties of  the  common  law.  This  period  covers  the 
establishment  of  celibacy  with  the  trains  of  evils  noted 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  when  the  marriage  of 
priests  was  declared  invalid,  their  wives  branded  as 
immoral  persons,  and  stain  of  illegitimacy  thrown  up- 
on their  children.  Despite  the  guarantees  of  the 
Runnymede  Charter,  and  the  religious  rebellion  of  the 
Eighth  Henry,  despite  the  vigor  of  Elizabeth  who 
bent  both  priest  and  prelate  to  her  fiery  will,  the  in- 
fluence of  this  period  moved  down  in  line  with  the 
Reformation,  and  to  the  injury  of  woman,  successfully 
incorporated  its  worst  features  into  the  common  law; 
the  new  church,  social  and  family  life  all  partaking 
of  this  injustice.  A  great  number  of  canons  were 
enacted  after  the  reformation.  These,  together  with 
the  foreign  canons  which  had  been  adopted,  were  held 
as  part  of  the  law  of  England.82  The  Episcopal 
church  appropriated  numerous  canons  extant  at  time 
of  the  reformation,  several  of  these  having  been  cre- 
ated for  purpose  of  sustaining  the  church  at  a  period 
when    the   temporal    power   threatened   encroachment. 

32.  Declaration  of  judges  in  the  famous  case  of  Evans  and  Ascuith.  Vaughn 
Mid  in  a  later  case  of  the  same  kind,  "If  Canon  Law  be  made  part  of  the  law  of 
this  land,  then  it  is  as  much  a  law  of  the  land  and  as  well,  and  by  the  same 
authority  as  any  other  part  of  the  law  of  the  land." 


CANON    LAW  129 

The  archdeacon  of  Surrey  prepared  a  voluminous  work 
upon  this  subject  known  as  the  Jurus,33  proving  that 
these  canons,  decrees,  etc.,  when  falling  into  disuse 
had  been  established  by  act  of  Parliament,  as  part  of 
the  law  of  England.  The  preface  of  his  work  declared 
that  it  had  been  prepared  purely  for  the  service  of 
the  clergy,  and  in  support  of  the  rights  and  privileges 
of  the  Church.  Thus  we  have  direct  proof  of  the 
adoption  of  papal  decrees  as  part  of  the  government 
of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  church, — the  Anglican — 
and  also  as  part  of  English  law. 

An  act  of  Parliament  at  this  age  was  regarded  as 
synonymous  with  a  law  of  God.  The  Bible  and  the 
English  government  were  upon  the  same  plane,  each 
to  be  implicitly  obeyed.34  Canon  Law  thus  firmly 
established  by  act  of  Parliament,  the  union  of  Church 
and  State  complete,  England  lost  much  of  that  civil 
freedom  whose  origin  can  be  traced  to  the  wise  legis- 
lation and  love  of  freedom  inhering  in  two  British 
queens,  Martia  and  Boadicea.  Suffering  from  cruel 
wrong,  the  latter  rose  in  revolt  against  the  Romans. 
Riding  among  the  squadrons  of  her  army  she  thus  ad- 
dressed them: 

It  will  not  be  the  first  time,  Britons,  that  you  have 

33.  Gibson  was  archdeacon  of  Surrey,  Rector  of  Lambeth,  and  Chaplain  of 
his  Grace  the  Lord  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  (Primate  of  all  England  and 
Metropolitan)  to  whom  the  Jurus  was  dedicated.  The  work  said:  "The  foreign 
is  what  we  commonly  call  the  body  of  Canon  Law,  consisting  of  the  Canons  of 
Councils,  Decrees  of  Popes  and  the  like,  which  obtained  in  England  by  virtue 
of  their  own  authority  (in  like  manner  as  they  did  in  other  parts  of  the  Western 
Church),  till  the  time  of  the  Reformation,  and  from  that  time  have  continued 
upon  the  foot  of  consent,  usage  and  custom.  For  which  distinction  we  have  no 
less  warrant  than  an  act  of  Parliament,  made  at  the  very  time  when  those  for- 
eign laws  were  declared  to  be  no  longer  binding  by  their  own  authority.  *  *  * 
We  have  a  plain  declaration  that  foreign  laws  became  part  of  the  law  of  Eng- 
land by  long  use  and  consent.     Gibson.— Codex  Jurus  Ecclesiasticum  Anglican. 

34.  English  Common  Law  Reports,  Hill  vs.  Gould,  Vaughn,  p. 327,  says:  "What, 
ever  is  declared  by  an  Act  of  Parliament  to  be  against  God's  law  must  be  so 
admitted  by  us,  because  it  is  so  declared  by  an  Act  of  Parliament." 


130  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    SI  ATE 

been  victorious  under  the  conduct  of  your  queen.  I 
come  not  here  as  one  of  royal  blood,  to  fight  for 
empire  or  riches,  but  as  one  of  the  common  people  to 
avenge  the  loss  of  their  liberty,  the  wrongs  of  myself 
and  my  children.  If  you  Britons  will  but  consider 
the  motives  of  our  war,  you  will  resolve  to  conquer 
or  die.  Is  it  not  much  better  to  fall  in  the  defense 
of  liberty  than  to  be  exposed  to  the  outrages  of  the 
Romans?  Such  at  least  is  my  resolution,  you  may  if 
you  please  live  and  be  slaves. 

But  many  historians  date  the  entire  subordination 
of  the  common  law  to  ecclesiasticism,  to  the  reign  of 
Stephen,  who  ascended  to  the  throne  1135,  the  fourth 
of  the  Anglo-Norman  kings.  In  order  to  keep  the 
ranks  of  the  church  full,  the  bearing  of  children  was 
enforced  upon  women  as  a  religious  duty.  No  condi- 
tion of  health  or  distaste  for  motherhood  was  admit- 
ted as  exemption.  Alike  from  the  altar,  the  confes- 
sional, and  at  the  marital  ceremony,85  was  this  duty 
taught,  nor  has  such  instruction  even  under  the  light 
of  physiology  and  new  regard  for  personal  rights,  yet 
ceased.56  No  less  is  the  unresisting  subjection  of 
women  in  this  relation  indirectly  or  directly  enforced 
by  the  Protestant  and  the  Greek  churches  as  the  law 
of  the  Bible  and  God.  'Increase  and  multiply'87  has 
been  the  first  commandment  for  woman,  held  as  far 
more  binding  upon  her  than  the  "Ten  Words"  of  Mount 
Sinai.  Proof  exists  in  abundance  of  a  character  im- 
possible to  present  in  this  work. 

Under  the  general  absence  of  learning  and  the 
equally  general  reverence  for  whatever  emanated  from 
the  church,  minor  ecclesiastics  found  it  in  their  power 

35.  Under  Catholic  form  the  bride  promises  to  consecrate  her  body  to  the 
marital  rite. 

36.  Chiniquy. —  The  Priest,  the  Woman  and  the  Confessional. 

37.  'The  cUrgy  formerly,  and  to  this  very  day,  declare  those  women  evil  whu 
Jesire  to  limit  self-indulgence  and  procreation." 


CANON    LAW  131 

to  promulgate  doctrines  to  suit  every  new  set  of  cir- 
cumstances; thus  many  laws  aside  from  regularly  pro- 
mulgated canons,  came  from  time  to  time  into  force. 
When  once  applied  they  assumed  all  the  power  of  cus- 
tom and  soon  bore  all  the  force  of  common  law.  The 
evils  of  ecclesiastical  law  were  soon  increased  through 
the  unsparing  use  of  forgery  and  falsehood.  Lea 
says: 

In  the  remodeling  of  European  Institutions,  so 
necessary  to  the  interests  of  Christianity  and  civiliza- 
tion, one  of  the  most  efficient  agencies  was  the  col- 
lection of  Canons  known  as  the  False  Decretals.  For- 
gery was  by  no  means  a  novel  expedient  to  the 
church.  From  the  earliest  times  orthodox  and  here- 
tics had  rivalled  each  other  in  the  manufacture  of 
whatever  documents  were  necessary  to  substantiate 
their  respective  positions  whether  in  faith  or  disci- 
pline. An  examination  of  these  Decretals  tends  to 
the  conclusion  that  they  were  not  the  result  of  one 
effort  or  the  work  of  one  man  Their  constant  repeti- 
tions and  their  frequent  contradiction  would  seem  to 
prove  this,  and  to  show  that  they  were  manufactured 
from  to  time  to  time  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the 
moment  or  to  gratify  the  feelings  of  the  writers.  In- 
terpolated into  codes  of  law,  adopted  and  amplified  in 
the  canons  of  councils  and  the  decretals  of  popes, 
they  speedily  became  part  of  the  civil  and  ecclesias- 
tical policy  of  Europe,  leaving  traces  on  the  consti- 
tutions which  they  afflicted  for  centuries  *  *  * 
The  pretenses  and  privileges  which  they  conferred  on 
the  hierarchy  became  the  most  dearly  prized  and  fre- 
quently quoted  portions  of  the  Canon  Law.  In  each 
struggle  with  the  temporal  authority,  it  was  the 
arsenal  from  which  were  drawn  the  most  effective 
weapons,  and  after  each  struggle  the  sacerdotal  com- 
batants had  higher  vantage  ground  for  the  ensuing 
conflict  *  *  *  theories  of  ecclesiastical  superiority 
which  left  so  profound  an  impress  on  the  middle  ages 
and  which  have  in  no  slight  degree  molded  our  mod- 
ern civilization. 


132  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Even  Magna  Charta  strengthened  Canon  Law,  con- 
firming many  liberties  of  the  Church,  and  injuring 
women  by  prohibiting  appeal  to  them  unless  for  the 
death  of  their  husbands.  While  the  general  tenor  of 
the  church  was  against  marriage,  an  unmarried  woman 
unless  dedicating  her  life  to  the  church  was  regarded 
with  more  contempt  than  the  married.  To  be  under 
control  of  a  husband  was  looked  upon  as  the  normal 
condition  of  women  not  living  celibate  lives.  Conse- 
quently women  were  driven  into  marriage  or  monastic 
houses,88  and  no  reproach  so  great  as  the  term  "old 
maid."  The  influence  of  custom  is  nowhere  more  dis- 
cernible than  in  Blackstone  himself.  The  great  com- 
mentator while  fully  admitting  the  blending  of  Canon 
with  Common  law,  also  acknowledging  its  most  pre- 
judicial effects  to  have  fallen  upon  woman,  yet 
attempts  to  prove  that  the  liberties  of  the  English 
people  were  not  infringed  through  ecclesiasticism. 
He  is  so  entirely  permeated  with  the  church  doctrine  of 
woman's  created  inferiority  as  not  to  be  willing  to 
acknowledge  the  infringement  of  her  natural  liberty 
through  it,  although  at  the  same  time  he  declares  that 
"whosoever  would  fully  understand  the  Canon  Law 
must  study  Common  Law  in  respect  to  woman."  Such 
benumbing  of  the  moral  faculties  through  her  doc- 
trines is  among  the  greatest  wrongs  perpetrated  by 
the  church  upon  mankind.  Nor  is  it  alone  in  regard 
to  woman.  During  the  Franco-Prussian  war  a  writer 
declared  the  great  and  absolute  need  of  the  French 
people  to  be  education;  that  of  moral  character  there 
was  absolutely  none,  either  in  the  higher  or  lower 
classes.  Even  the  sons  of  aristocratic  families  educa- 
ted   in   Jesuit    schools,    being    at    most    taught    that 

38.  See  Lecky. — Hist.  European  Morals* 


CANON    LAW  I33 

wrong  can  only  be  measured  by  a  formal  religious 
standard,  and  that  every  wrong  can  be  wiped  out  by 
confession  to  the  priest.  French  education,  this 
writer  declared  to  be  that  of  two  centuries  ago,  when 
might  was  looked  upon  as  identical  with  justice. 
Nor  can  morality  be  taught  while  its  basis  in  the 
church  remains  the  same. 

The  priestly  profession  held  the  most  brilliant  prom- 
ises of  gratified  ambition  to  every  man  that  entered 
it.  Not  alone  did  he  possess  the  keys  of  heaven  and 
hell,  but  also  those  of  temporal  power.  The  laity 
were  his  obedient  servants  upon  which  he  could  im- 
pose penance  and  from  whose  coffers  wealth  could  be 
made  to  flow  into  his  own.  Through  long  continued 
false  teaching  the  people  believed  their  fate  in  both 
worlds  more  fully  depended  upon  the  priesthood  than 
upon  their  own  course  in  life,  God  having  deputed  a 
share  of  his  power  to  every  priest  and  monk,  no  mat- 
ter how  debased;  and  that  when  he  spoke  it  was  not 
himself,  but  God,  through  his  lips,  as  asserted  by  the 
priesthood  themselves.  This  impious  assertion  so 
capable  as  shown  of  being  used  for  the  most  tyrannous 
purposes,  came  also  into  the  Reformation,  and  is  even 
heard  from  the  lips  of  Protestant  clergymen  to- 
day.39 Denied  recognition  of  a  right  to  decide  for 
themselves  whether  the  priest  spoke  from  God,  or 
from  his  own  ambitious  and  iniquitous  purposes, 
deprived  of  education  as  well  as  of  free  thought, — 
the  latter  a  crime  to  be  punished  with  death  after  the 
most  diabolical  torture, — it  is  not  a  subject  of  surprise 

39-  In  a  sermon  laudatory  of  the  preachers  office,  delivered  in  the  May 
Memorial  Unitarian  Church,  in  Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  Sunday,  Nov.  27, 1887,  Rev.  Mr 
Calthrop,  the  pastor,  said:  "Noble  words  are  your  chief  weapons  of  offense  and 
defense.  But  remember  it  is  not  you  that  speak  when  you  utter  them,  but  the 
Holy  Ghost.  From  Report  0/  Sermon,  published  in  the  "Daily  Standard,'' 
November  28  th. 


134  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

that  the  majority  of  the  christian  world  was  a  prey  to 
the  vilest  superstition.  The  claim  of  infallibility, 
which  may  be  unsuccessfully  combated  when  urged 
by  a  single  individual, became  all-potent  when  advanced 
by  a  large  powerfully  organized  and  widely  distributed 
class  under  guise  of  religion,  into  which  the  element 
of  fear  largely  entered.  No  salvation  outside  of  the 
church  was  a  fundamental  doctrine  of  that  body.  Hell 
was  declared  not  to  be  peopled  alone  by  the  heathen, 
but  by  christian  heretics,  and  the  excommunicated 
who  had  died  without  obtaining  forgiveness  from  the 
Church.  These  were  depicted  as  in  eternal  torments 
of  a  more  terrible  character  than  even  those  whom 
birth  had  left  ignorant  of  the  plan  of  salvation.  The 
strength  of  the  church  lay  in  its  control  of  the  con- 
science and  the  will.  Upon  the  State  it  fastened  double 
bonds;  first,  by  its  control  of  each  individual  member; 
second,  in  its  capacity  of  secular  ruler.  Long  before 
the  days  of  Torquemada  and  Ximenes,  the  Inquisition 
had  practically  been  brought  to  every  man's  door. 
The  imagination,  that  faculty  that  in  its  perfection 
constitutes  the  happiness  of  mankind,  was  made  the 
implement  of  excessive  mental  torture.  Common  Law 
as  it  exists  to-day  is  the  outgrowth  of  Ecclesiastical 
or  Canon  Law  touching  upon  all  the  relations  of  life 
but  falling  with  heaviest  weight  upon  woman,  as 
Blackstone  so  frankly  admits.40  From  the  X.  to  the 
XVI.  centuries  is  the  period  when  the  features  of  the 
Canon  Law  most  derogatory  to  woman  became 
thoroughly  incorporated  into  English  common  law, 
since  which  period  the  complete  inferiority  and  sub- 
ordination of  woman  has  been  as  fully  maintained  by 
the  State  as  by  the  Church. 

40.  Whoever  wishes  to  gain  insight  into  that  great  institution,  Common  Law, 
can  do  so  most  efficiently  by  studying  Canon  Law  in  regard  to  married  women. 
Commentaries* 


CANON    LAW  135 

Common  Law  in  not  alone  English  law,  it  is  the 
basic  law  of  the  United  States.  Chancellor  Kent  said 
of  it,  "Common  Law  is  part  of  the  fundamental  law  of 
the  United  States."  It  has  been  recognized  and 
adopted  as  one  entire  system  by  the  constitutions  of 
Massachusetts,  New  York,  New  Jersey  and  Maryland. 
It  has  been  assumed  by  courts  of  justice,  or  declared 
by  statute,  as  the  law  of  the  land  in  every  State, 
although  its  influence  upon  the  criminal  codes  of 
England  and  the  United  States  has  but  recently 
attracted  the  attention  of  legal  minds.  Wharton  whose 
"Criminal  Law  "  has  been  for  years  a  standard  work, 
did  not  examine  this  relation  until  its  seventh  edition. 
In  the  preface  to  this  edition  he  gave  a  copious  array 
of  authors  in  English,  German,  Latin,  in  proof  that 
the  criminal  codes  of  those  two  countries  are  perma- 
nently based  upon  Ecclesiastical  Law. 

An  early  council  of  Carthage  thus  ordained: 
"Let  not  a  woman  however  learned  or  holy  presume 
to  teach  a  man  in  a  public  assembly."  To  this  Canon 
may  be  ascribed  the  obstacles  thrown  in  the  way  of 
women  even  during  the  present  century,  who  have 
come  before  the  world  as  public  teachers  in  the  pul- 
pit, at  the  bar,  in  medicine,  or  the  more  customary 
branches  of  instruction.  Advancing  civilization  of 
the  present  century  is  still  hampered  by  the  laws  of 
an  imperfect  church,  enacted  many  hundred  years 
since.  The  trial  of  Mistress  Anne  Hutchinson  in  New 
England,  during  the  XVII.  Century,  was  chiefly  for  the 
sin  of  having  taught  men. 

All  modern  legislation  can  be  referred  to  the  church 
for  its  origin  although  most  especially  noticable  in 
reference  to  women  legislated  for  as  a  class,  distinct 
and  separate  from  men.     Under  Church  laws,  the  hum- 


136  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

ble,  the  ignorant,  the  helpless  have  been  the  most 
oppressed,  because  of  their  powerlessness,  but  upon 
no  part  of  humanity  has  this  oppression  so  heavily 
fallen  as  upon  her  whom  the  church  has  declared  to 
be  the  author  of  all  the  misery  of  human  life.41  The 
laws  of  bastardy  and  illegitimacy  still  extant  in  Chris- 
tian countries  which  decree  that  a  child  born  outside 
of  marriage  shall  be  known  by  its  mother's  name  and 
she  alone  responsible  for  its  support,  and  which  do 
not  allow  it  to  inherit  its  putative  father's  property 
even  when  he  acknowledges  the  child  as  his  own,  are 
of  ecclesiastical  origin.  Enacted  by  the  Church  in  its 
most  powerful  days,  as  protection  to  a  celibate  priest- 
hood against  all  claim  by  mother  or  child,  they  are  still  a 
reminder  of  the  Matriarchate  when  the  sole  right  of 
the  mother  to  the  child  was  unquestioned.  But  under 
Church  ruling  this  law  that  the  child  should  follow  the 
condition  of  the  mother,  herself  but  a  slave,  was  the 
source  of  great  injustice  both  to  women  and  to  thou- 
sands of  innocent  children.  Under  feudalism  and  during 
slavery  the  child  of  the  feudal  lord  or  powerful  master 
by  a  serf  woman,  became  at  birth  subject  to  all  the 
restrictions  of  the  mother  while  the  father  was  freed 
from  accountability  of  any  nature.  The  Antonelli 
case  referred  to  in  the  second  chapter,  in  which  the 
Countess  Lambertini  claimed  heirship  of  Cardinal 
Antonelli's  property  as  his  daughter,  was  decided 
against  her  not  upon  denial  of  her  paternity  which 
was  most  fully  proven,  but  because  under    church  law 

41.  Distinction  of  class  appears  most  prominently  in  all  the  criminal  laws  for 
which  the  clergy  are  responsible.  It  was  for  the  man  of  low  estate,  the  slave, 
and  for  women,  that  the  greatest  atiocities  were  reserved.  If  the  thief  was  a 
free  woman  she  was  to  be  thrown  down  a  precipice  or  drowned  (a  precedent 
without  doubt  for  dragging  a  witch  through  a  pond).  If  the  thief  was  a  female 
slave,  and  had  stolen  from  any  but  her  own  lord,  eighty  female  slaves  were  to 
attend,  each  bearing  a  log  of  wood  to  pile  the  fire  and  burn  the  offender  to 
death.     Pike. — Hist.  0/  Crime  in  England ',  49-51. 


CANON    LAW  137 

this  daughter  had  no  claim  upon  her  priestly  father. 
Under  Canon  Law  she  was  no  more  to  be  regarded  as 
his  child  than  as  the  child  of  any  other  man.  She 
was  "fatherless."  She  was  "A  sacrilegious  child" 
having  violated  sacred  things  by  coming  into  existence. 
Her  "holy*'  father  under  Canon  Law  was  entirely 
irresponsible  for  her  birth.48 

The  reformation  proved  itself  in  many  ways  as 
restrictive  towards  woman  as  Catholicism.  The  com- 
mencement of  modern  law  dates  to  the  reign  of  Eliza- 

42.  A  correspondent  of  "The  London  Times"  writes  from  Rome  that  he  has 
not  heard  a  single  doubt  expressed  as  to  the  paternity  of  the  Countess  Lamber- 
tini,  and  the  line  adopted  by  the  Antonelli  heirs  tacitly  confirms  it.  They  strenu- 
ously oppose  the  production  of  any  of  the  evidence  the  plaintiff  has  offered. 
They  object  to  the  depositions  of  the  witnesses  being  heard  and  tested,  and  they 
have  declared  their  intention  of  impugning  as  forgeries  the  documentary  proofs 
tendered.  These  documents  consist  of  some  letters  written  by  Antonietta  Mar- 
coni to  the  Archpriest  Vendetta,  and  particularly  one  dated  April  1, 1857,  wherein, 
asking  him  to  prepare  a  draught  of  a  letter  to  the  Cardinal,  she  says  that  "Gia- 
como"  does  not  send  her  money,  although  he  knows  that  he  has  a  daughter  to 
support,  and  that  Loretina  is  a  cause  of  great  expense.  "Write  to  him  forcibly," 
she  says,  "or  I  shall  do  something  disagreeable.  The  extent  of  the  scandal  in 
Rome  does  not  consist  so  much  in  the  fact  of  a  Cardinal  in  Antonelli's  position 
having  had  one  or  more  children,  as  in  the  law-suit  which  has  brought  all  the  in- 
timate details  connected  with  the  affair  before  the  public.  Antonelli  was  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  a  layman,  filling  one  of  those  civil  departments  of  an  eccle- 
siastical temporal  Government  to  qualify  for  which  it  was  indispensably  requisite 
to  assume  the  ecclesiastical  habit.  He  accepted  early  in  life  those  obligations 
without  which  no  career  would  have  been  open  to  him,  and,  like  many  others,  he 
regarded  them  as  mere  matters  of  form,  for  under  the  imperturbable  mask  of 
the  ecclesiastical  diplomat  beat  a  heart  filled  with  the  warmest  domestic  affec- 
tions and  instincts;  and  how  strong  those  feelings  were  in  him  was  fully  demon- 
strated in  his  will,  and  is  clearly  shown  in  every  incident  of  the  story  now  re- 
vealed. 

Dame  Gervasi  has  been  subjected  to  a  rigid  cross-examination  by  the  counsel 
of  the  brothers  Antonelli.  The  proceedings  were  conducted  with  closed  doors, 
but  a  Roman  correspondent  of  "The  Daily  News"  seems  in  some  manner  to  have 
wormed  out  the  essential  facts.  When  the  mysterious  "foreign  young  lady" 
went  to  lodge  at  Dame  Gervasi's,  Cardinal  Antonelli— so  the  gossip  runs— paid 
several  visits  to  his  prot6ge\  "I  remember,"  says  the  Dame,  "that  when  I  went 
to  open  the  door  to  them  I  held  in  my  hand  a  bowl  of  beef  tea,  which  I  was  taking 
to  the  patient.  Dr.  Lucchini  was  the  first  to  enter,  and  I  soon  recognized  the 
second  visitor  to  be  Cardinal  Antonelli,  who  wore  a  long  redingote  and  a  tall  hat. 
He  took  the  bowl,  which  I  held  in  my  hand.  'This  is  for  the  patient,'  he  said  in- 
quiringly, but  before  I  had  time  to  reply  he  had  swallowed  part  of  its  contents." 
Dame  Gervasi  then  proceeded  to  relate  how  Dr.  Lucchini  left  the  Cardinal  alone 
with  the  foreign  young  lady.  The  witness  put  her  ear  to  the  keyhole,  and  heard 
distinctly  the  sound  of  kisses  alternating,  with  sobs  between  the  two.  His  Emi- 
nence, to  console  the  patient,  told  her  he  had  taken  every  precaution  against  the 
matter  becoming  known.  "Don't  be  afraid,"  he  said,  "nobody  will  be  a  bit  the 
wiser.  You  will  be  able  to  marry.  As  for  the  baby,  that's  my  affair.  I  will  take 
care  of  her,  and  I  swear  to  you  that  she  will  never  know  the  name  of  her  mother." 
Dame  Gervasi  gave  the  names  of  the  persons  who  had  come  to  her  on  behalf  of 
the  brothers  Antonelli,  and  these  emissaries,  she  said,  tried  to  make  her  disclose 
all  she  knew,  and  promised  her  large  sums  of  money  to  bind  her  to  silence  as  to 
the  clandestine  part  played  by  Signora  Marconi,  and  as  to  the  Cardinal's  rela- 
tions with  the  "foreign  young  lady."—  N.  Y.  Tribune,  July  j,  1878. 


I38  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

beth,  who  established  the  reformation  upon  a  firm 
basis.  The  oppression  of  her  reign  exceeded  all  that 
had  been  experienced  under  Catholicism.  No  cottager 
in  England  was  permitted  to  shelter  his  homeless 
mother  or  sister  under  penalty48  because  she  was 
"masterless."  The  greatest  amount  of  legislation  both 
religious  and  secular  under  the  Patriarchate  has  had 
woman  for  its  object,  and  this  is  especially  noticeable 
in  all  countries  where  Christianity  has  been  the  domi- 
nant power,  because  she  has  not  been  regarded  by  the 
church  as  a  component  part  of  humanity, but  as  an  off- 
shoot whose  rights  and  responsibility  were  entirely 
different  from  those  of  man.  Although  among  the 
Anglo-Saxons  the  priesthood  possessed  great  influence 
yet  after  the  Norman  Conquest  ecclesiasticism  gained 
much  greater  control  in  England,  and  Canon  Law  be- 
gan to  influence  legislation,  as  has  been  shown,  exer- 
cising its  chief  restrictive  force  upon  woman.  While 
under  old  Common  Law,"  a  husband  was  compelled  to 
leave  his  wife  one-third  of  his  property  and  could  leave 
her  as  much  more  as  he  pleased,  by  Canon  Law  he 
was  prohibited  from  leaving  her  more  than  one-third 
and  could  leave  her  as  much  less  as  he  pleased.  Thus 
ecclesiasticism  presumed  to  control  a  husbancTs  affec- 
tions  and  placing  its  slimy  fingers  upon  common  law, 
allowed  the  husband  to  leave  his  wife  in  absolute 
poverty,  notwithstanding  that  her  property  upon  mar- 
riage,   and    her    services    under    marriage,     belonged 

43.  See  Reeves. — Early  English  Law. 

44.  Hollingshed' s  Chronicles. 

The  foundation  of  old  common  law  seems  traceable  to  Martia,  the  widow  of 
Guilliame,  left  regent  of  her  husband's  kingdom,  comprising  a  part  of  Britain, 
two  hundred  years  prior  to  the  christian  era.  This  queen  directed  her  attention  to 
framing  a  system  of  laws  which  acquired  for  her  the  surname  of  "Proba,"or  ''The 
Just."  They  were  evidently  one  of  the  three  parts  under  which  the  common 
law  is  divided,  although  under  canon  law  the  entire  property  of  the  wife 
became  that  of  the  husband  upon  marriage. 


CANON    LAW  139 

exclusively  to  him.  As  early  as  the  twelfth  century, 
Glanville  laid  it  down  as  a  law  of  the  British  Kingdom 
that  no  one  was  compelled  to  leave  another  person 
any  portion  of  his  property,  and  that  the  part  usually 
devised  to  wives  was  left  them  at  the  dictate  of 
affection  and  not  of  law.  Thus  early  did  the  Church 
in  England  override  Common  Law  to  the  detriment  of 
woman.  While  thus  legislating  in  opposition  to 
family  rights,  the  church  continually  favored  its  own 
increase  of  its  own  property.45  The  world  has  pro- 
duced no  system  so  thoroughly  calculated  to  extend 
its  own  power  and  wealth,  as  this  vast  celibate  organ- 
ization which,  under  the  guise  of  religion,  appealed  to 
man's  superstition,  and  ruled  his  will  under  the  assump- 
tion of  divine  authority,  the  family  being  its  chief 
objective  point  of  attack. 

While  under  feudalism  his  lord  was  to  receive  the 
best  gift  at  the  villein's  death,  the  church  the  second 
best,  in  time  the  demands  of  the  church  overpowered 
those  of  the  lord,  as  well  as  those  of  the  family.  So 
rapacious  did  the  church  at  last  become  in  its  demand 
for  valuable  gifts  and  its  claim  of  one  third  of  a  man's 
property  upon  his  decease,  that  the  civil  law  ultimate- 
ly interfered,  not  however  in  the  interests  of  wives, 
but  of  creditors.  Canon  Law  nearly  everywhere  pre- 
vailed, having  its  largest  growth  through  the  pious 
fiction  of  woman's  created  inferiority.  Wherever  it 
became  the  basis  of  legislation,  the  laws  of  succession 
and  inheritance,  and  those  in  regard  to  children,  con- 
stantly sacrificed  the  interests  of  wives  and  daughters 
to  those  of  husbands  and  sons.  Church  legislation  created 

45-  In  England,  in  1538,  or  even  earlier,  it  was  calculated  that  besides  the 
tithes,  one-third  of  the  kingdom  was  ecclesiastical  property,  and  that  these  vast 
possessions  were  devoted  to  the  support  of  a  body  of  men  who  found  their  whole 
serious  occupation  in  destroying  the  virtue  of  women.    Lea. — Sacerdotai  Celibacy. 


I40  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

numerous  and  stringent  enactments  which  rendered  it 
impossible  for  woman  to  succeed  to  any  considerable 
amount  of  property,  forcing  her  to  entire  dependence 
upon  man,  either  as  a  wife,  or  as  a  resident  of  a  relig- 
ious house;  thus  she  entirely  lost  the  freedom  possessed 
by  her  in  pagan  Rome.48 

While  under  Canon  Law  the  dower  of  the  wife  was 
forfeited  by  attainder  of  the  husband,  yet  the  husband 
did  not  lose  his  right  to  the  wife's  property  in  case 
she  was  attainted  of  treason.  Under  Canon  Law  if 
for  recognized  just  cause  of  the  husband's  cruelty  the 
wife  separated  from  him,  she  was  returned  upon  his 
demand  provided  he  gave  security  for  treating  her 
well. 

Canon  Law  gave  to  the  husband  the  power  of  com- 
pelling the  wife's  return  if,  for  any  cause,  she  left  him. 
She  was  then  at  once  in  the  position  of  an  outlaw, 
branded  as  a  runaway  who  had  left  her  master's  serv- 
ice, a  wife  who  had  left  "bed   and  board"  without  con- 

46.  The  pagan  laws  during  the  Empire  had  been  continually  repealing  the  old 
disabilities  of  women;  and  the  legislative  movement  in  their  favor  continued  with 
unabated  force  from  Constantine  to  Justinian,  and  appeared  also  in  some  of  the 
early  laws  of  the  barbarians.  But,  in  the  whole  feudal  legislation,  women  were 
placed  in  a  much  lower  legal  position  than  in  the  pagan  Empire.  In  addition  to 
the  personal  restrictions  which  grew  necessarily  out  of  the  Catholic  Christian 
doctrines  concerning  divorce,  and  the  subordination  of  the  weaker  sex,  we  find 
numerous  and  stringent  enactments,  which  rendered  it  impossible  for  women  to 
succeed  to  any  considerable  amount  of  property,  and  which  almost  reduced  them 
to  the  alternative  of  marriage  01  a  nunnery.  The  complete  inferiority  of  the  sex 
was  continually  maintained  by  law;  and  that  generous  public  opinion  which  in 
Rome  had  frequently  revolted  against  the  injustice  done  to  girls,  in  depriving 
them  of  the  greater  part  of  the  inheritance  of  their  fathers,  totally  disappeared- 
Wherever  the  canon  law  has  been  the  basis  of  legislation,  we  find  laws  of  succes- 
sion sacrificing  the  interests  of  daughters  and  of  wives,  and  a  state  of  public 
opinion  which  has  been  formed  and  regulated  by  these  laws;  nor  was  any  serious 
attempt  made  to  abolish  them  till  the  close  of  the  last  century.  The  French 
Revolutionists,  though  rejecting  the  proposal  of  Sieyes  and  Condorcet  to  accord 
political  emancipation  to  women,  established  at  least  an  equal  succession  of  sons 
and  daughters,  and  thus  initiated  a  great  reformation  of  both  law  and  opinion, 
which  sooner  or  later  must  traverse  the  world.  Lecky. — Hist.  Morals^  Vol.  IL 
PP  357-359. 


CANON    LAW  I4I 

sent,  and  whom  all  persons  were  forbidden  "to  harbor" 
or  shelter  "under  penalty  of  the  law."  The  absconding 
wife  was  in  the  position  of  an  excommunicate  from 
the  Catholic  Church,  or  of  a  woman  condemned  as  a 
witch.  Any  person  befriending  her  was  held  acces- 
sory to  the  wife's  theft  of  herself  from  her  husband, 
and  rendered  liable  to  fine  and  other  punishment  for 
having  helped  to  rob  the  husband  (master)  of  his  wife 
(slave).  The  present  formula  of  advertising  a  wife, 
which  so  frequently  disgraces  the  press,  is  due  to  this 
belief  in  wife-ownership 

Whereas  my  wife  *  *  *  has  left  my  bed  and 
board  without  just  cause  or  provocation,  I  hereby  for- 
bid all  persons  from  harboring  or  trusting  her  on  my 
account. 

By  old  English  law,  in  case  the  wife  was  in  danger 
of  perishing  in  a  storm,  it  was  allowable  "to  harbor" 
and  shelter  her.  It  is  less  than  fifty  years  since  the  dock- 
ets of  a  court  in  New  York  city,  the  great  metropolis  of 
the  United  States,  were  sullied  by  the  suit  of  a  husband 
against  parties  who  had  received,  "harbored"  and  shel- 
tered his  wife  after  she  left  him,  the  husband  recover- 
ing $10,000  damages. 

In  losing  control,  upon  marriage,  of  her  person  and 
her  property,  woman's  condition  became  that  of  an 
infant.  No  act  of  hers  was  of  legal  value.  If  she 
made  a  bargain  her  husband  could  repudiate  it  and 
the  person  with  whom  she  had  contracted  was  held  to 
have  taken  part  in  a  fraud.  The  denial  under  Com- 
mon Law  of  her  right  to  make  a  contract  grew  out  of 
the  denial  of  her  right  of  ownership.  Not  possessing 
control  of  her  inheritance  or  of  her  future  actions,  she 
was  consequently  held  unable  to  make  a  binding  con- 
tract.*7   Forbidden  the  right  of  acting  for  herself;  de- 

47.  Sheldon  Amos. — Science  0/ Law. 


142  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

prived  of  the  ownership  and  control  of  her  own  prop- 
erty or  earnings,  woman  had  little  opportunity  to 
prove  her  business  capacity.  Since  the  time  of  Aris- 
totle the  control  of  property  has  been  recognized  as 
the  basis  of  social  and  responsible  conditions.  The 
great  school  of  German  jurists48  teach  that  ownership 
increases  both  physical  and  moral  capacity,  and  that 
as  owner,  actual,  or  possible,  man  is  a  more  capable 
and  worthy  being  than  he  would  otherwise  be. 

Inasmuch  as  through  both  the  ecclesiastical  and 
civil  laws  of  Christendom,  woman  was  debarred  from 
giving  testimony  in  courts  of  law;  sisters  prohibited 
from  sharing  a  patrimony  with  brothers;  wives 
deprived  of  property  rights  both  of  inheritance  and 
earnings,  it  is  entirely  justifiable  to  say  that  even  the 
boasted  Common  Law,  that  pride  of  English  speaking 
peoples,  has  greatly  injured  civilization  through  its 
destruction  of  woman's  property  rights.  Canon  or 
Church  laws  were  enacted  upon  the  principle  of 
protection  for  men  alone  and  upon  these  civil  laws 
gradually  became  wholly  based.  Herbert  Spencer49 
has  not  failed  to  recognize  this  fact  in  England.  No 
less  in  law  than  in  religion  is  woman  dealt  with  as  a 
secondary  being,  for  whom  equal  religious  rights  or 
Mjual  civil  rights  are  not  designed.  While  under  the 
Matriarchate  justice  and  purity  prevailed,  and  the  in- 
herent rights  of  man  were  preserved,  we  find  an 
entirely  contrary  condition  under  the  Patriarchate, 
that  system  enacting  laws  solely  with  intent  to  man's 
interest  regardless  alike  of  mother,  sister,  wife  or 
daughter.       The  entire  destruction  under   Canon    and 

48.  Ibid, 

49.  Our  laws  are  based  on  the  all-sufficiency  of  man's  rights.  Society  exists 
'or  man  only;  for  women  merely  as  they  are  represented  by  some  man;  are  in  the 
mundi  or  keeping  of  some  man.— Descriptive  Sociology  0/ England. 


CANON    LAW  143 

civil  law,  of  woman's  property  rights,  has  not  alone 
lessened  her  responsibility,  but  has  also  diminished 
her  self-respect.  As  in  common  with  a  child,  or  a 
slave,  her  business  agreements  were  held  as  of  no 
binding  force,  she  ultimately  came  to  regard  herself  as 
incapable  of  business  transactions.  In  England  until 
a  very  recent  date,  and  in  the  United  States  until 
when  in  1839,  Mississippi  first  placed  the  control  of 
her  own  property  in  a  married  woman's  hands  (to  be 
followed  in  1848,  by  Pennsylvania,  New  York,  and 
about  the  same  period  by  Rhode  Island),  it  was 
in  the  husband's  power  in  every  part  of  christian 
Europe  and  America,  to  repudiate  any  bargain,  sale 
or  gift  made  by  the  wife  as  of  no  binding  legal  force, 
and  this,  even  though  she  had  brought  the  entire 
property  into  the  marital  firm.60  Therefore  under 
Christian  laws  the  person  with  whom  the  wife  made  a 
contract,  or  to  whom  she  made  a  gift  was  held  as  a 
criminal,  or  participant  in  a  fraud.  The  wife  under 
Canon  Law  belonged  to  the  husband,  and  as  a 
sequence  to  not  owning  herself  she  could  not  own 
property,  and  in  her  condition  of  servitude  could  pos- 
sess no  control  over  either  her  present  or  her  future 
actions.  Such  is  Common  Law  warped  and  changed 
by  Canon  Law.61 

Property  is  a  delicate  test  of  the  condition  of  a  na- 
tion. It  is  a  remarkable  fact  in  history  that  the  rights 
of  property  have  everywhere   been   recognized    before 

50.  This  slavish  condition  of  the  wife  yet  prevails  in  over  one-half  the  states  of 
the  union. 

51.  The  relations  in  respect  to  property  which  exist  between  husband  and  wife 
in  England,  is  solely  grounded  on  her  not  being  assumed  at  common  law  to  have 
sufficient  command  of  her  purse  or  of  her  future  actions  wherewith  to  procure  the 
materials  for  making  a  contract.  The  legal  presumption  then  is,  that  she  did 
not  intend  to  make  one,  and  therefore  the  allegation  that  she  did  make  a  contract 
would  simply  on  the  face  of  it  be  a  fraud.    Amos.—  Science  of  Law. 


144  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  rights  of  person.  The  American  Revolution  arose 
from  an  attack  upon  property  rights  and  although  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  assumed  the  rights  of 
person  to  be  primal,  this  unique  foundation  for  a  sys- 
tem of  government  has  not  yet  fully  been  admitted  in 
practice,  and  woman  is  still  denied  its  advantages  and 
responsibilities.  While  the  property  owner  unwitting- 
ly becomes  a  hostage  for  the  security  of  the  state  itself, 
it  needs  governmental  recognition  of  the  rights  of  per- 
son, in  order  to  create  firm  self-reliance  and  a  feeling 
of  strength  and  freedom.  A  proper  self-respect  can- 
not inhere  in  any  person  under  governmental  control 
of  others.  Unless  the  person  so  governed  constantly 
maintains  a  system  of  rebellion  in  thought  or  deed, 
the  soul  gradually  becomes  debased,  and  the  finest 
principles  of  human  nature  suffer  a  rapid  process  of 
disintegration;  The  integrity  of  elementary  principles 
disappears, bad  citizenship  results,  the  general  rights 
of  humanity  are  ignored,  selfish,  personal,  or  family  in- 
terests taking  their  place.  Good  citizenship  requires 
individual  personal  responsibility  in  affairs  of  the 
state. 

That  property  rather  than  person  still  receives  re- 
cognition in  governmental  matters,  owes  its  origin  to 
the  period  when  the  rights  of  the  common  people  in 
both  property  and  person  were  ignored.  The  effort 
of  the  peasant  was  chiefly  directed  to  securing  proper- 
ty. To  his  clouded  vision,  the  wealth  of  the  lord 
created  his  power,  and  to  a  great  extent  such  was  the 
fact.  Intuitively  he  felt  that  property  rights  were  the 
basis  of  the  rights  of  persons.  The  Church  possessed 
enormous  wealth,  as  did  all  his  oppressors,  and  the 
peasant  could  but  see  that  control  of  rights  of  proper- 
ty was  a  dangerous  assault  upon   their  rights  of    per- 


CANON   LAW  I45 

son.  The  foremost  element  of  all  slavery  is  the  denial 
to  the  slave  of  right  to  the  proceeds  of  his  own  labor. 
As  soon  as  a  colored  slave  in  the  United  States,  was 
permitted  to  hire  his  time,  the  door  of  freedom  began 
to  open  for  him.  Thus  when  Canon  Law  so  influenced 
Civil  and  Common  Law  that  it  forbade  woman's  inher- 
itance and  ownership  of  property,  it  placed  its  final 
touch  upon  her  degradation;  she  virtually  became  a 
slave  to  her  husband.  Sir  Henry  Maine  is  outspoken 
in  declaring  that  Christianity  has  thus  deeply  injured 
civilization,  an  injury  from  which  he  asserts  there  can 
be  no  recovery  as  long  as  society  remains  christian. 
As  a  man  of  profound  thought  he  does  not  fail  to  see 
that  the  prevailing  religious  sentiment  created  by  the 
teachings  of  the  church  as  to  woman's  created  infe- 
riority and  subjection  to  man,  was  the  cause  of  that 
destruction  of  her  property  rights.  The  priests  of 
pagan  Rome  held  juster  view  regarding  woman  than 
did  the  Christian  Church.  Before  the  establishment 
of  Christianity  they  had  conferred  the  rights  of  woman 
to  property;  daughters  inherited  equally  with  sons. 
To  such  extent  was  woman's  rights  of  property  carried 
that  at  one  period,  as  has  been  heretofore  stated,  the 
greater  part  of  the  real-estate  of  the  empire  was  in 
woman's  possession.52  The  slavish  condition  of 
woman  greatly  increased  through  denial  of  her  rights 
of  inheritance,  was  more  fully  established  through 
denial  to  her  of  the   fruits    of    her   own    labor   in    the 

52.  The  jurisconsults  had  evidently  at  this  time  assumed  the  equality  of  the 
sexes  as  a  principle  to  the  code  of  equity.  The  situation  of  the  Roman  woman, 
whether  married  or  single, became  one  of  great  personal  and  proprietary  independ- 
ence; but  Christianity  tended  somewhat  from  the  very  first  to  narrow  this  re- 
markable liberty.  The  prevailing  state  of  religious  sentiment  may  explain  why 
modern  jurisprudence  has  adopted  those  rules  concerning  the  position  of  woman, 
which  belong  peculiarly  to  an  imperfect  civilization.  No  society  which  pre- 
serves any  tincture  of  Christian  institutions  is  likely  to  restore  to  married  women 
the  personal  liberty  conferred  on  them  by  middle  Roman  law.  Canon  law  has 
deeply  injured  civilization.— Sir  Henry  Maine. 


I46  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

marriage  relation.  Under  church  law  the  wife  was 
the  husband's  personal  slave,  all  her  time  was  abso- 
lutely his.  Civil  and  ecclesiastical  law  held  her  as 
completely  under  his  authority.  Her  property,  her 
person,  her  time  and  services  were  all  at  the  husband's 
disposal.  Nor  did  the  Reformation  effect  a  change  in 
this  respect.  Luther's  ninety  Theses  nailed  against 
the  church  door  in  Wittemberg,  did  not  assert  woman's 
natural  or  religious  equality  with  man.  It  was  a 
maxim  of  his  that  "no  gown  or  garment  worse  became 
a  woman  than  that  she  will  be  wise."  The  home 
under  the  reformation  was  governed  by  the  laws  in 
force  before  that  period. 

First.  She  was  to  be  under  obedience  to  the  mas- 
culine head  of  the  household. 

Second.  She  was  to  be  constantly  employed  for  his 
benefit. 

Third.  Her  society  was  strictly  chosen  for  her  by 
her  master  and  responsible  head. 

Fourth.  This  masculine  family  head  was  regarded 
as  a  general  father-confessor  to  whom  she  was  held  as 
responsible  in  word  and  deed. 

Fifth.  Neither  genius  nor  talent  could  free  women 
from  such  control  without  his  consent. 

The  Cromwellian  period  while  exhibiting  an  in- 
crease of  piety  brought  no  amelioration  to  woman. 
The  old  Church  doctrine  of  her  having  caused  the  ex- 
pulsion of  men  from  Paradise  was  still  proclaimed 
from  the  pulpit,  and  warnings  against  her  extreme 
sinfulness  lost  none  of  their  invective  strength  from 
the  lips  of  the  new  gospel.  All  kinds  of  learning 
and  accomplishments  for  her  fell  under  new  reproba- 
tion and  the  old  teaching  as  to  her  iniquities  and  the 
necessity  for  her  to  feel   shame  from  the   fact  of   her 


CANON    LAW  147 

existence  took  new  force  after  the  rise  of  Melancthon, 
Huss,  and  Luther.53  About  this  period  it  was  said 
"she  that  knoweth  how  to  compound  a  pudding  is 
more  desirable  than  she  who  skilfully  compoundeth  a 
poem."54  Men  thought  it  no  shame  to  devote  them- 
selves to  the  pleasure  of  the  table.  Epicures  and 
gluttons  abounded,  but  to  women  was  forbidden  a 
seat  at  the  world's  intellectual  board;  she  who  secured 
learning  did  so  at  the  peril  of  her  social  and  religious 
position.  Under  no  other  system  of  religion  has  there 
been  such  absolute  denial  of  woman's  right  to  directly 
approach  the  divinity;  under  no  other  religious  sys- 
tem has  her  debasement  been  greater.55 

It  cannot  be  asserted  that  the  religious  system 
teaching  restrictive  moral  and  civil  laws  regarding 
woman,  is  of  the  past.  Its  still  great  living  influence 
is  shown  by  the  thousands  of  pilgrims  who  visited 
Italy  during  the  Pope's  Jubilee  and  the  presents  of  in- 
calculable value  that  by  tens  of  thousands  poured  into 
the  papal  treasury  in  commemoration  of  the  fiftieth 
anniversary  of  the  entrance  of  Pope  Leo  XIII.  into  the 
priesthood.     These   were  received  from    almost  every 

53.  Under  the  Commonwealth,  society  assumed  a  new  and  stern  aspect- 
Women  were  in  disgrace;  it  was  everywhere  declared  from  the  pulpit  that  woman 
caused  man's  expulsion  from  Paradise,  and  ought  to  be  shunned  by  Christians  as 
one  of  the  greatest  temptations  of  Satan.  "Man,"  said  they,  "is  conceived  in 
sin  and  brought  forth  in  iniquity;  it  was  his  complacency  to  woman  that  caused 
his  first  debasement;  let  man  not  therefore  glory  in  his  shame;  let  him  not  wor- 
ship the  fountain  of  his  corruption."  Learning  and  accomplishments  were 
alike  discouraged,  and  women  confined  to  a  knowledge  of  cooking,  family  medi- 
cines and  the  unintelligible  theological  discussions  of  the  day.  Lydia  Maria 
Child. — History  of  Woman* 

54.  Many  women  made  their  entrance  into  literature  through  the  msdium  of  a 
cook  book,  thus  virtually  apologizing  for  the  use  of  a  pen. 

55.  The  slavish  superstition  under  which  church  teaching  still  keeps  the 
minds  of  men  was  no  less  shown  by  the  thousands  who  visited  the  St.  Anne  relic 
in  the  United  States.  Nor  are  Protestants  but  little  less  under  the  same  super- 
stition, accepting  the  teaching  of  the  church  without  investigation.  An  educated 
Protestant  girl,  upon  her  return  from  Europe,  recently,  gravely  declared  that  dur- 
ing her  absence  she  had  seen  the  spear  which  pierced  the  Saviour's  side. 


I48  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

civilized  nation,  Christian,  Mohammedan,  Catholic, 
Protestant.  Even  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  head  of  a  form  of  government  which  recognizes 
religion  as  entirely  disconnected  with  the  State,  so 
tar  catered  to  superstition,  so  far  conceded  the  assump- 
tions of  this  system,  as  to  send  an  elegant  copy  of  the 
Federal  Constitution  to  the  Pope,  through  Car- 
dinal Gibbons.6*  No  stronger  proof  is  required 
of  the  still  powerful  influence  of  that  system 
based  upon  the  degradation  of  woman,  than  the  fact 
that  the  President  of  the  United  States,  temporary 
head  of  a  nation  professedly  based  upon  a  recognition 
of  equal  civil,  political  and  religious  rights;  the 
Queen  of  England  head  of  the  Anglican  Church;  the 
Sultan  of  Turkey  representative  of  Mohammedanism; 
Sadogara,  the  celebrated  Rabbi  of  Vienna,  known  as 
the  "Pope  of  the  Hebrews,"  were  all  found  among  the 
the  number  of  persons  outside  of  Catholicism  who  by 
gifts  recognized  this  occasion.  It  was  but  ten  years 
previously  that  Pope  Pius  IX.  celebrated  his  jubilee 
entrance  into  the  Episcopal  office  with  great  pomp 
and  ceremony,  but  the  jubilee  of  Leo  XIII.  exceeded 
in  splendor  and  popular  interest  anything  of  the  kind 
ever  before  known  as  the  history  of  the  church.     With 

56.  The  most  interesting  of  all  to  Americans  is  the  copy  of  the  American  Con- 
stitution that  President  Cleveland  sent  to  the  Vatican  by  Cardinal  Gibbons.  It  is 
printed  on  vellum  in  richly  illuminated  English  characters,  and  bound  in  white 
and  red.  It  is  enclosed  in  a  case  of  purple  plush  with  gold  hinges,  and  bears 
this  autographic  inscription  by  President  Cleveland: 

"Presented  to  his  Holiness  Pope  Leo  XIII.,  as  an  expression  of  congratulation 
on  the  occasion  of  his  sacerdotal  jubilee,  with  the  profound  regard  of  Grover 
Cleveland,  President  of  the  United  States,  through  the  courtesy  of  his  Eminence 
Cardinal  Gibbons,  Archbishop  of  Baltimore.' 

Washington,  D.  C 

Upon  the  next  page,  beneath  an  American  eagle  printed  in  gold,  is  this  in- 
scription: 

"The  Constitution  of  the  United  States.     Adopted  Sept.  17,  1787." 

The  page  bearing  this  inscription  and  all  the  fly  lea\  es  were  of  exquisite  watered 
silk. 


CANON    LAW  I49 

a  religious  clientelle  of  200,000,000  behind  him,  and 
the  ten  thousand  magnificent  testimonials  as  to  the 
justice  of  his  claim  as  vicar  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  world 
cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  by  the  danger  to  human 
liberty  still  connected  with  this  powerful  organization; 
an  organization  that  in  its  control  of  human  thought 
and  human  will  has  ever  been  of  incalculable  injury 
to  mankind.  Portions  of  the  daily  press  saw  the  contin- 
uing danger,  declaring  that: 

These  facts  are  truly  impressive  indicating  as  they 
do  the  tremendous  hold  which  the  Roman  ecclesias- 
tical system  has  gained  over  the  hearts  and  minds  of 
men.  Very  striking,  too,  is  the  contrast  between  all 
this  magnificence  and  pomp  and  manifest  aspiration 
for  temporal  power  on  the  part  of  one  who  claims  to 
be  the  representative  on  earth  of  the  "meek  and  lowly 
Jesus,"  and  the  poverty,  unostentation  and  self-denial 
of  the  "Son  of  Man,"  who  had  not  where  to  lay  his  head. 

This  jubilee  is  an  event  of  great  moment  to  the  XIX. 
century,  at  once  a  warning  and  a  proof  of  the  life  and 
strength  of  that  scheme  which  has  for  its  real  end,  not 
alone  the  spiritual  but  also  the  temporal  subjugation  of 
the  entire  human  race.  Since  Italy  under  King  Hum- 
bert secured  its  release  from  the  temporal  power,  thus 
severing  the  last  authoritative  grasp  of  the  pope  upon 
temporal  kingdoms,  the  attempt  has  been  sedulously 
made  to  create  a  fictitious  sympathy  for  the  pope  under 
claim  of  his  imprisonment  in  the  Vatican.  Nor  at  the 
least  supreme  moment  of  his  pride  and  glorification 
did  the  pope  forget  to  call  attention  of  the  world  to  his 
temporal  claims,  by  a  refusal  to  receive  the  offered  gifts 
of  the  king  and  queen  who  occupy  the  worldly  throne 
he  maintains  to  be  especially  his  own.67 

57.  "Owing  to  the  pope's  refusal  to  accept  the  gifts  of  the  king  and  queen  of 
Italy  on  the  occasion  of  his  jubilee,  all  the  members  of  the  House  of  Savoy,  in- 
cluding the  Duke  d'Aosta  and  the  Princess  Clotilde,  have  omitted  to  send  offer- 


I50  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

The  doctrine  of  original  sin  and  woman  as  the  orig- 
inal sinner,  transplanted  from  Judaism  into  Christian- 
ity by  Paul  in  the  statement  that  "Adam,  first  created, 
was  not  first  in  sin,"  was  developed  to  its  present  evil 
proportions  by  the  early  Christian  Fathers.  To  St 
Augustine,  whose  youth  was  spent  in  company  with 
the  most  degraded  of  womankind,  is  the  world  indebted 
for  the  full  development  of  the  doctrine  of  original 
sin.  Taught  as  one  of  the  most  sacred  mysteries  of 
religion,  which  to  doubt  or  to  question  was  to  hazard 
eternal  damnation,  it  at  once  exerted  a  most  powerful 
and  repressing  influence  upon  woman,  fastening  upon 
her  a  bondage  which  the  civilization  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  not  been  able  to  cast  off. 

Reverence  for  the  ancient  in  customs,  habits  of  life, 
law,  religion,  is  the  strongest  and  most  pernicious 
obstacle  to  advancing  civilization.  To  this  doctrine 
of  woman's  created  inferiority58  and  original  sin  we  can 
trace  those  irregularities  which  for  many  centuries 
filled  the  Church  with  shame,  for  practices  more 
obscene  than  the  orgies  of  Babylon  or  Corinth,  and 
which  dragged  Christendom  to  a  darkness  blacker  than 
the  night  of  heathendom  in  pagan  countries— a  dark- 
ness upon  which  the  most  searching  efforts  of  histo- 
rians cast  scarcely  one  ray  of  light — a  darkness  so  pro- 
found that  from  the  seventh  to  the  eleventh  century  no 
individual  thought  can  be  traced. 

Rev.  Charles  Kingsley,  a  canon  of  the  English 
Church  declared  that  from  the  third  to  the  fifteenth 
centuries,   Christianity  had  been  swamped  by  hysteria 

ings.  This  is  the  fly  in  the  jubilee  ointment  of  Pope  Leo  XIII.,  and  settles  the 
question  of  concessions  of  temporal  power.  Nevertheless,  the  day  is  passed 
when  the  claim  of  'imprisonment  in  the  Vatican'  will  further  avail  the  pope." 

58.  When  Linneaus  published  his  sexual  system  of  plants,  in  the  eighteenth 
cantury,  he  was  ridiculed  and  shunned  as  one  who  had  degraded  nature. 


Canon  law  151 

in  the  practice  of  all  those  nameless  orgies  which 
made  a  by-word  of  Corinth  during  the  first  century. 
Every  evil  was  traced  to  woman.  A  curious  old  black 
letter  volume  published  in  London,  1632,  declares 
that  "the  reason  why  women  have  no  control  in  Parlia- 
ment, why  they  make  no  laws,  consent  to  none,  abro- 
gate none,  is  their  original  sin." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

MARQUETTE. 

The  minds  of  people  having  been  corrupted  through 
centuries  by  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  in  regard  to 
woman,  it  became  an  easy  step  for  the  State  to  aid 
in  her  degradation.  The  system  of  feudalism  aris- 
ing from  the  theory  that  warfare  was  the  normal  con- 
dition of  man,  still  oppressed  woman  by  bringing  into 
power  a  class  of  men  accustomed  to  deeds  of  violence, 
who  found  their  chief  pleasure  in  the  sufferings  of 
others.  To  be  a  woman  appealed  to  no  instinct  of 
tenderness  in  this  class.  To  be  a  woman  was  not  to 
be  protected  unless  such  woman  held  power  in  her  own 
right,  or  acted  in  place  of  some  feudal  lord.  The 
whole  body  of  villeins  and  serfs  were  under  absolute 
dominion  of  the  feudal  lords.  They  were  regarded  as 
possessing  no  rights  of  their  own ;  the  priests  had  con- 
trol of  their  souls,  the  lord,  of  their  bodies.  But  it 
was  not  upon  the  male  serfs  that  the  greatest  oppres- 
sion fell.  Although  the  tillage  of  the  soil,  the  care 
of  swine  and  cattle  was  theirs,  the  masters  claiming 
half  or  more  of  everything,  even  to  one-half  of  the 
wool  shorn  from  the  flock,1  and  all  exactions  upon 
them  were  great  while  their  sense  of  security  was 
slight,  it  was  upon  their  wives  and  daughters  that  the 

i.  In  the  dominion  of  the  Count  de  Foix,  the  lord  had  right  once  in  his  life- 
time  to  take,  without  payment,  a  certain  quantity  of  goods  from  the  stores  of  each 
tenant.    Cesar  Caiilu.—Histoire  Untverselle. 

152 


MARQUETTE  I 53 

greatest  outrages  were  inflicted.  It-  was  a  pastime  of 
the  castle  retainers  to  fall  upon  peaceful  villages,  to 
the  consternation  of  the  women,  who  were  struck,  tor- 
tured, and  made  the  sport  of  ribald  soldiers.2  "Serfs  of 
the  body,"  they  had  no  protection.  The  vilest  out- 
rages were  perpetrated  by  the  feudal  lords  under  the 
name  of  "rights."  Women  were  taught  by  church 
and  state  alike  that  the  feudal  lord  or  seigneur  had 
a  right  to  them  not  only  as  against  themselves,  but  as 
against  any  claim  of  husband  or  father.  The  custom 
known  by  a  variety  of  names,  but  more  modernly  as 
'marchetta,"  or  "marquette,"  compelled  newly  mar- 
ried women  to  a  most  dishonorable  servitude.  They 
were  regarded  as  the  rightful  prey  of  the  feudal  lord 
for  from  one  to  three  days  after  their  marriage,5  and 
from  this  custom,  the  oldest  son  of  the  serf  was  held 
as  the  son  of  the  lord,  "as  perchance  it  was  he  who 
begot  him." 

From  this  nefarious  degradation  of  woman  the  cus- 
tom of  Borough-English  arose,  the  youngest  son  be- 
coming the  heir.4  The  original  signification  of  the 
word  borough,  being  to  make  secure,  the  peasant 
through  Borough-English  made  secure  the  right  of  his 
own  son  to  what  inheritance  he  might   leave,  thus  cut- 

2.  Two  women  seized  by  German  soldiers  were  covered  with  tar,  rolled  in 
feathers,  and  exhibited  in  the  camp  as  a  new  species  of  bird. 

3.  Among  the  privileges  always  claimed,  and  frequently  enforced  by  the  feu- 
dalry,  was  the  custom  of  the  lord  of  the  manor  to  lie  the  first  night  with  the  bride 
of  his  tenant. — Sketches  0/ Feudalism,  p.  109. 

By  the  law  of  "Marquette"  under  the  feudal  system  (which  rested  on  personal 
vassalage),  to  the  "lord  of  the  soil"  belonged  the  privilege  of  first  entering  the 
nuptial  couch  unless  the  husband  bad  previously  paid  a  small  sum  of  money,  or 
its  equivalent,  for  the  ransom  of  his  bride;  and  we  read  that  these  feudal  lords 
thought  it  was  no  worse  thus  to  levy  on  a  young  bride  than  to  demand  half  the 
wool  of  eacb  flock  of  sheep.  Article  on  Relation  0/  the  Sexes.— Westminster 
Review. 

4.  The  custom  of  Borough-English  is  said  to  have  arisen  out  of  the  Marchetta 
or  plebeian's  first  born  son  being  considered  his  lord's  progeny.— Dr.  Tusler. 


154  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

ting  off  his  property  from  the  possible  son  of  his  hated 
lord.  France,  Germany,  Prussia,  England,  Scotland, 
and  all  christian  countries  in  which  feudalism  existed, 
held  to  the  enforcement  of  marquette.  The  lord 
deemed  this  right  his,  as  fully  as  he  did  his  claim  to 
half  the  crops  of  the  land,  or  half  the  wool  shorn  from 
the  sheep.  More  than  one  reign  of  terror  arose  in 
France  from  the  enforcement  of  this  law,  and  the  up- 
risings of  the  peasants  over  Europe  during  the  twelfth 
century  and  the  fierce  Jacquerie,  or  Peasants  War,  of- 
the  fourteenth  century  in  France,  owed  their  origin 
among  other  causes  to  the  enforcement  of  these  claims 
by  the  lords  upon  the  newly  married  wife.  The  Edicts 
of  Marley  securing  the  seigneural  tenure  in  Lower 
Canada  transplanted  that  claim  to  America  when 
Canada    was  under  the  control  of  France.6 

During  the  feudal  period  when  chivalry  held  highest 
rank  in  the  duties  of  the  knight,  women  of  the  lower 
classes  were  absolutely  unprotected.  Both  Church  and 
State  were  their  most  bitter  enemies;  the  lords  even  if 
in  holy  orders  did  not  lessen  their  claims  upon  the 
bride.  Most  of  the  bishops  and  chanonies  were  also 
temporal  lords.  The  Bishop  of  Amiens  possessed  this 
right  against  the  women  of  his  vassals  and  the  peas- 
ants of  his  fiefs,  of  which  he  was  dispossessed  at  the 
commencement  of  the  fifteenth  century,  by  an  arreet, 
rendered  at  the  solicitation  of  husbands.6  Although 
the  clergy,  largely  drawn  from  the  nobility,23  whose 
portionless  younger  sons  were  thus  easily  pro- 
vided for,  sustained  the  corruptions  of    the    lords   tern. 

5.  "It  is  not  very  likely  that  Louis  XIV.  thought  the  time  would  ever  come  when 
the  peasant's  bride  might  not  be  claimed  in  the  chamber  of  his  seigneur  on  her 
bridal  night.  Those  base  laws,  their  revocation  has  been  written  in  the  blood  of 
successive  generations." 

6.  See  Feudal  Dictionary. 


MARQUETTE  I 55 

poral  yet  having  connected  themselves  with  the  church, 
they  did  not  fail  to  preserve  their  own  power  even 
over  the  nobility. 

The  canons  of  the  Cathedral  of  Lyons,  bore  title  of 
Counts  of  Lyons;  sixteen  quarters  of  nobility,  eight 
on  side  of  the  father;  eight  on  side  of  the  mother. 
The  marchetta  or  cuissage  was  still  practiced  by  them 
in  the  fourteenth  century  at  the  time  Lyons  was  re- 
united to  the  crown  of  France.  It  was  but  slowly, 
after  a  great  number  of  complaints  and  arrests  of 
judgment  that  the  canons  of  Lyons  consented  to 
forego  this  custom.  In  several  cantons  of  Piccardy, 
the  cur£s  imitated  the  bishops  and  anciently  took  the 
right  of  cuissage,  but  ultimately  the  peasants  of  this 
region  refused  to  marry,  and  the  priests  gave  up  this 
practice  which  they  had  usurped  when  the  bishop  had 
become  too  old  to  take  his  right.7  The  resolution  not 
to  marry,  surprised  and  confounded  the  lord  "suzer- 
ains," who  perceived  it  would  cause  the  depopulation 
of  their  feifs.  During  the  feudal  period,  bearing 
children  was  the  duty  pre-eminently  taught  women. 
Serf  children  increased  the  power  and  possessions  of 
the  lord,  they  also  added  to  the  power  of  the  church, 
and  the  strangest  sermons  in  regard  to  woman's  duty 
in  this  respect  fell  from  the  lips  of  celibate  monks 
and  priests.  She  was  taught  that  sensual  submission 
to  man,  and  the  bearing  of  children,  were  the  two 
reasons  for  her  having  been  created,  and  that  the 
woman  who  failed  in  either  had  no  excuse  for  longer 
encumbering  the  earth.  The  language  used  from  the 
pulpit  for  the  enforcement  of  these  duties,  will  not 
bear   reproduction.8    The    villeins    were  not    entirely 

7.  The  interests  of  ecclesiastics  as  feudal  nobles  were  in  some  respects  iden- 
tical with  those  of  the  barons,  but  the  clergy  also  constituted  a  party  with  interests 
of  its  own. 

8.  M.  GSrun,  as  quoted  by  Grimm,  gives  curious  information  upon  this  subject 


I56  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

submissive  under  such  great  wrongs,  frequently  protest* 
ing  against  this  right  of  their  suzerains.  At  one  time  a 
number  of  Piedmont  villages  rose  in  united  revolt, 
compelling  the  lords  to  relinquish  some  of  their  powers. 
Although9  the  concessions  gained  were  but  small, 
not  putting  an  end  to  the  lord's  claim  to  the  bride  but 
merely  lessening  the  time  of  his  spoliation,  the  results 
were  great  in  establishing  the  principle  of  serf 
rights. 

Marquette  began  to  be  abolished  in  France  towards 
the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.10  But  an  authority 
upon  this  question  says  that  without  doubt  the  usage 
still  continued  in  certain  countries,  farther  asserting 
that  even  in  this  century  it  existed  in  the  county  of 
Auvergene,  and  several  vassals  plead  to  their  lords 
against  the  continuance  of  this  custom  because  of  the 
great  unhappiness  it  caused  them.  The  lower  orders 
of  the  clergy  were  very  unwilling  to  relinquish  this 
usage,  vigorously  protesting  to  their  archbishops 
against  the  deprivation  of  the  right,  declaring  they 
could  not  be  dispossessed.11  Bcems  states  that  he  was 
present  at  a  spiritual  council  of  the  metropolitane  of 
Bourges,  and  heard  a  priest  claim  the  right  upon 
ground  of  immemorial  usage.12 

Although  feudalism  is  generally  considered  the 
parent  of  this  most  infamous  custom,  some  writers 
attribute  its  origin  to  an  evangelical  council,  or  to 
precepts   directly   inculcated  by    the    church,13    whose 

9.  Par  example,  dans  quelques  seigneuries,  on  le  seigneur  passent  trois  nuits 
avec  les  nouvelles  marri^es,  il  fut  convenu  qu'il  n'eu  passant  qu'une.  Dans 
d'autres,  ou  le  seigneur  avant  le  premiere  nuit  seulment,  ou  ne  lui  accordes  plus 
qu'une  heure. 

10.  Collins  de  Plancy. 

11.  Feudal  Dictionary,  p.  179. 

12.  Claiming  the  right  of  the  first  night  with  each  new  spouse.— Bcems  Decis- 
ions 297,  1 -1 7. 

13.  Raepsaet,  p.  179. 


MARQUETTE  157 

very  highest  dignitaries  did  not  hesitate  to  avail  them- 
selves of  the  usage.  In  1471,  quite  the  latter  part  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  Pope  Sixtus  IV  u  sought  admis- 
sion to  the  very  illustrious  Piedmont  family,  Delia 
Rovere,  which  possessed  the  right  of  cuissage,  allow- 
ing the  lord  absolute  control  of  his  vassals  newly 
wedded  bride  for  three  days  and  nights;  a  cardinal  of 
the  family  having  secured  the  patent  by  which  this 
outrageous  and  abominable  right  was  granted  them. 
The  rights  of  the  Lords  spiritual  in  the  jus  pritnce 
noctis,  at  first,  perchance,  confined  to  those  temporal 
lords  who  holding  this  right  entered  the  church,  at 
last  extended  to  the  common  priesthood,  and  the  con- 
fessional became  the  great  fount  of  debauchery. 
Woman  herself  was  powerless;  the  church,  the  state, 
the  family,  all  possessed  authority  over  her  as  against 
herself.  Although  eventually  redemption  through  the 
payment  of  money,  or  property,  was  possible,  yet  a 
husband  too  poor  or  penurious  to  save  her,  aided  in 
this  debasement  of  his  wife.16  This  inexpressible 
abuse  and  degradation  of  woman  went  under  the 
name  of  pastime,  nor  were  the  courts  to  be  depended 
upon  for  defense.16  Their  sympathies  and  decisions 
were  with  the  lord.  Few  except  manorial  courts  ex- 
isted. Even  when  freedom  had  been  purchased  for 
the  bride,  all  feudal  customs  rendered  it  imperative 
upon  her  to  bear  the  "wedding  dish"  to  the  castle. 
Accompanied    by    her    husband,   this    ceremony    ever 

14.  The  popes  anciently  had  universal  power  over  the  pleasures  of  marriage. — 
Feudal  Dictionary,  174 

15.  In  the  transaction  the  alternative  was  with  the  husband;  it  was  he  who 
might  submit,  or  pay  the  fine,  as  he  preferred  or  could  afford.  Relation  0/  the 
Sexes. — Westminster  Review. 

16.  These  (courts)  powerfully  assisted  the  seigneur  to  enforce  his  traditional 
privileges  at  the  expense  of  the  villeins.—//.  S.  Maine. 

The  courts  of  Beam  openly  maintained  that  this  right  grew  up  naturally. 


I58  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

drew  upon  the  newly  married  couple  a  profusion  of 
jeers  and  ribald  jests  from  which  they  were  powerless 
to  protect  themselves.  While  in  ancient  Babylon 
woman  secured  immunity  by  one  service  and  payment 
to  the  temple,  the  claim  of  the  lord  to  the  peasant 
wife  was  not  always  confined  to  the  marriage  day,  and 
refusal  of  the  loan  of  his  wife  at  later  date  brought 
most  severe  punishment  upon  the  husband.17 

Blessing  the  nuptial  bed  by  the  priest,  often  late  at 
night,  was  also  common,  and  accompanied  by  many 
abuses,  until  advancing  civilization  overpowered  the 
darkness  of  the  church  and  brought  it  to  an  end. 
When  too  poor  to  purchase  the  freedom  of  his  bride, 
the  husband  was  in  one  breath  assailed  by  the  most 
opprobrious  names,18  and  in  the  next  he  was  congratu- 
lated upon  the  honor  to  be  done  him  in  that  per- 
chance his  oldest  child  would  be  the  son  of  a  baron.19 
So  great  finally  became  the  reproach  and  infamy  con- 
nected with  the  droit  de  cuissage,  as  this  right  was 
generally  called  in  France,20  and  so  recalcitrant  be- 
came the  peasants  over  its  nefarious  exactions,  that 
ultimately  both  lords  spiritual  and  lords  temporal  fear- 
ing for  their  own  safety,  commenced  to  lessen  their 
demands.21    This  custom  had  its  origin  at  the  time  the 

17.  Sometimes  the  contumacious  husband  was  harnessed  by  the  side  of  a 
horse  or  an  ox,  compelled  to  do  a  brute's  work  and  to  herd  with  the  cattle. 

18.  He  is  followed  by  bursts  of  laughter,  and  the  noisy  rabble  down  to  the 
lowest  scullion  give  chase  to  the  "cuckold." — Michelet. 

19.  The  oldest  born  of  the  peasant  is  accounted  the  son  of  his  lord,  for  he,  per- 
chance it  was,  that  begat  him.  When  the  guests  have  retired,  the  newly  wedded 
husband  shall  permit  his  lord  to  enter  the  bed  of  his  wife,  unless  he  shall  have 
redeemed  her  for  five  shillings  and  four  pence. — Grimm. 

20.  Droit  de  cuissage  c'est  le  droit  de  mettre  une  cuisse  dans  le  lit  d'une  autre, 
ou  de  coucher  avec  le  femme  d'une  vassal  ou  d'une  serf. 

So  much  scandal  was  caused  that  finally  the  archbishop  of  Bourges  abolished 
this  right  in   his  diocese. — Feudal  Dictionary. 

21.  A  yoke  of  cattle  and  a  measure  of  wheat  was  afterwards  substituted  for  a 
money  ransom,  but  even  this  redemption  was  in  most  cases  entirely  beyond  the 
power  of  the  serf. 


MARQUETTE  159 

great  body  of  the  people  were  slaves  bound  either  to 
the  person  or  land  of  some  lord.  At  this  period  per- 
sonal rights  no  more  existed  for  the  lower  classes  than 
for  the  blacks  of  our  own  country  during  the  time  of 
slavery.  Under  feudalism,  the  property,  family  ties, 
and  even  the  lives  of  the  serfs  were  under  control  of 
the  suzerain,  It  was  a  system  of  slavery  without  the 
name;  the  right  of  the  lord  to  all  first  fruits  was  uni- 
versally admitted;22  the  best  in  possession  of  the  serf, 
by  feudal  custom  belonged  to  the  lord.  The  feudal 
period  was  especially  notable  for  the  wrongs  of  women. 
War,  the  pastime  of  nobles  and  kings,  brought  an 
immense  number  of  men  into  enforced  idleness.  Its 
rapine  and  carnage  were  regarded  as  occupations 
superior  to  the  tillage  of  the  soil  or  the  arts  of  peace. 
Large  numbers  of  men,  retainers  of  every  kind,  hung 
about  the  castle  dependent  upon  its  lord,  obedient  to 
his  commands.23  At  an  age  when  books  were  few  and 
reading  an  accomplishment  of  still  greater  rarity, 
these  men,  apart  from  their  families,  or  totally  un- 
bound by  marriage,  were  in  readiness  for  the  grossest 

Under  the  feudal  system  the  lord  of  the  manor  held  unlimited  sway  over  his 
serfs.  He  farther  possessed  the  so-called  Jus  Prima  Noctis  (Right  of  the  First 
Night),  which  he  could,  however,  relinquish  in  virtue  of  a  certain  payment,  the 
name  of  which  betrayed  its  nature.  It  has  been  latterly  asserted  that  this  right 
never  existed,  an  assertion  which  to  me  appears  entirely  unfounded.  It  is  clear 
the  right  was  not  a  written  one,  that  it  was  not  summed  up  in  paragraphs;  it  was 
the  natural  consequence  of  the  dependent  relationship,  and  required  no  registra- 
tion in  any  book  of  law.  If  the  female  serf  pleased  the  lord  he  enjoyed  her,  if 
not  he  let  her  alone.  In  Hungary,  Transylvania,  and  the  Danubian  principali- 
ties, there  was  no  written  Jus  Prima  Noctis  either,  but  one  learns  enough  of  this 
subject  by  inquiry  of  those  who  know  the  country  and  its  inhabitants,  as  to  the 
manners  which  prevail  between  the  land  owners  and  the  female  population. 
That  imposts  of  this  nature  existed  cannot  be  denied,  and  the  names  speak  for 
themselves.     August  Bebel. —  Woman  in  the  Past,  Present  and  Future. 

22.  In  a  parish  outside  Bourges  the  parson  as  being  a  lord  especially  claimed 
the  first  fruits  of  the  bride,  but  was  willing  to  sell  his  rights  to  the  husband. 

23.  The  infamous  noble  who  accompanied  a  certain  notorious  actress  to  this 
country  in  the  fall  of  1886,  possessed  forty  livings  in  his  gift. 


l6o  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

amusement.  At  an  age  when  human  life  was  value- 
less, and  suffering  of  every  kind  was  disregarded,  we  can 
readily  surmise  the  fate  likely  to  overtake  unprotected 
peasant  women.  They  were  constantly  ridiculed  and 
insulted;  deeds  of  violence  were  common  and  passed 
unreproved.  For  a  woman  of  this  class  to  be  self-re- 
specting was  to  become  a  target  for  the  vilest  abuse. 
Morality  was  scoffed  at;  to  drag  the  wives  and  daugh- 
ters of  villeins  and  serfs  into  the  mire  of  lechery  was 
deemed  a  proper  retribution  for  their  attempted  pure 
lives;  they  possessed  no  rights  of  person  or  morality 
against  the  feudal  lord  and  his  wild  retainers.  All 
christian  Europe  was  plunged  into  the  grossest  im- 
morality.24 A  mistress  was  looked  upon  as  a  necessary 
part  of  a  monarch's  state.26  Popes,  cardinals,  and 
priests  of  lesser  degrees,  down  to  the  present  century, 
still  continued  the  unsavory  reputation  of  their  prede- 
cessors;26 "nephews,"  "nieces,"  and  "sacrilegious"  chil- 
dren are  yet  supported  by  the  revenues  of  the  Church, 
or  left  to  poverty,  starvation  and  crime.  It  was  long 
the  custom  of  christian  municipalities  to  welcome 
visiting  kings  by  deputations  of  naked  women,27  and 
as   late   as   the   eighteenth   century,  a  mistress   whose 

24.  No  greater  proof  of  this  statement  is  needed  than  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  disease  brought  by  the  sailors  of  Columbus  spread  over  Europe;  infecting  the 
king  on  his  throne,  the  peasant  in  the  field,  the  priest  at  the  altar,  the  monk  and 
nun  in  the  cloister. 

25.  In  deference  to  that  public  sentiment  which  required  the  ruler  to  pose 
before  the  world  as  a  libertine,  Friedrich  Wilhelm  I.,  of  Prussia  (1713-1740), 
although  old  and  in  feeble  health,  kept  up  the  pretense  of  a  liason  with  the  wife 
of  one  of  his  generals,  the  intimacy  consisting  of  an  hour's  daily  walk  in  the 
castle  yard. — August  Bebel. 

26.  Down  to  Pius  IX.     See  The  Woman,  the  Priest  and  the  Confessional. 

27.  When  the  Emperor  Charles  II.  entered  Bourges,  he  was  saluted  by  a  depu- 
tation of  perfectly  naked  women.  At  the  entrance  of  King  Ladislaus  in  to  Vienna, 
1452,  the  municipal  government  sent  a  deputation  of  public  women  to  meet  him 
the  beauty  of  whose  forms  was  rather  enhanced  than  concealed  by  their  covering 
of  gauze.  Such  cases  were  by  no  means  unusual. —  Woman  in  the  Past,  Present 
and  Future. 


MARQUETTE  l6l 

support  was  drawn  from  the  revenues  of  the  kingdom, 
was  recognized  as  part  of  the  pageantry  of  the  king- 
dom. 

The  heads  of  the  Greek  and  Protestant  Churches, 
no  less  than  of  the  Catholic,  appear  before  the  world  as 
men  of  scandalous  lives.  The  history  of  the  popes  is 
familiar  to  all  students.  No  less  is  that  of  the  Eng- 
lish Eighth  Henry,  the  real  father  of  the  Reformation, 
in  England,  and  founder  of  the  Anglican  Church, 
whose  adulteries  and  murders  make  him  a  historic 
Blue  Beard.  The  heads  of  the  Greek  Church  figure  in 
a  double  sense  as  fathers  of  their  people.  The  re- 
nowned Peter  the  Great  amused  himself  by  number- 
less liasons,  filling  Russia  with  descendants  whose  in- 
herited tendencies  are  those  of  discontent  and  tur- 
moil. When  he  visited  the  Court  of  Prussia,  1717,  he 
was  accompanied  by  his  czarina,  son,  daughter,  and 
four  hundred  ladies  in  waiting,  women  of  low  condi- 
tion, each  of  whom  carried  an  elegantly  dressed  infant 
upon  her  arms.  If  asked  in  regard  to  the  paternity 
of  the  child  they  invariably  replied  "my  lord  has 
done  me  the  honor  to  make  me  its  mother."28 

In  no  country  has  a  temporal  monarch  under  guise 
of  a  spiritual  ruler  been  more  revered  than  in  Russia. 
Even  amidst  nihilism  a  belief  that  the  czar  can  do 
no  wrong  is  the  prevailing  conviction  among  the 
Slavic  peoples.  This  is  both  a  great  cause  of,  and  a 
result  of  Russian  degradation,  If  we  except  the  pro- 
portionately few  liberal  thinkers,  that  conviction  is 
as  strong  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  Ivan  the  Terrible. 
In  no  civilized  or  half-civilized  nation  is  ignorance  as 
dense  as  among  the  peasantry  of  that  vast  empire  em- 
bracing one-sixth  of  the  habitable  globe.      Nor  to  the 

28.  Memoirs  of  the  Princess  o/Bareith,  a  sister  of  Frederick  the  Great. 


1 62  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

czar  alone  was  such  disregard  of  woman's  right  of 
person  confined.  The  system  of  serfdom  which 
existed  until  within  the  last  half  of  the  present  cen- 
tury, was  a  system  of  feudalism  in  its  oppression  of 
women,  although  if  possible  even  more  gross.  The 
sale  of  young  peasant  girls  regularly  took  place,  and 
the  blood  of  the  nobility  of  that  country  runs  in  the 
veins  of  its  most  degraded  and  ignorant  population.29 
Although  Italy  the  seat  of  the  papal  power  is  noted 
for  the  ignorance,  squalor,  and  superstition  of  its 
people,  we  no  less  find  such  a  condition  of  affairs  ex- 
isting in  Russia.  Amid  the  starvation  of  its  people, 
accompanied  by  "hunger-typhus,"  that  form  of  disease 
which  in  the  Irish  famine  of  1848  was  known  as  "ship- 
fever,"  the  peasants  will  not  accept  aid  from  Count 
Tolstoi,  whom  they  have  been  taught  to  regard  as 
Anti-Christ,  fearing  that  by  so  doing  they  will  con- 
demn themselves  to  eternal  torment.30  While  the 
peasantry  are  thus  suffering  wrongs  of  every  nature, 
the  priesthood  and  churches  are  as  thriving  as  before. 
Having  shown  the  results  of  power  in  the  hands  of 
a  controlling  class,  upon  women  of  low  degree  in  both 
the  Catholic  and  Greek  divisions  of  Christendom,  we 
have  but  to  look  at  our  own  country  to  find  like  con- 

29.  In  Russia  the  nobles  have  such  rights  by  law  over  the  women  of  their 
lands  that  the  population  scarcely  resent  the  sale  by  auction  of  all  the  young 
peasants  of  their  village.  These  nobles,  a  race  once  proud  and  mean,  extrava- 
gant and  covetous,  full  of  vice  and  cunning,  are  said  to  be  a  class  superior  to  the 
people.  Yet  they  are  working  the  ruin  of  their  influence  by  multiplying  in  the 
masses  the  number  of  individuals,  already  very  considerable,  to  whom  they  have 
transmitted  their  genius  with  their  blood. — A.  R.  Craig,  M.A. 

30.  London,  February  i.—  The  Odessa  correspondent  of  "The  Daily  News" 
says:  Hunger  typhus  is  spreading  alarmingly.  In  large  towns  in  this  region  all 
the  hospitals  are  filled,  and  private  buildings  are  being  converted  into  hospitals. 
This  is  the  state  of  affairs  in  Moskovskia  and  Viedomosti.  A  correspondent 
writing  from  Russia .  declares  that  the  more  fanatical  and  superstitious 
portion  of  the  peasantry  believe  that  Count  Tolstoi  is  Antichrist,  and  decline 
to  accept  his  bounty  for  fear  they  will  thus  commit  their  souls  to  perdition. 


MARQUETTB  163 

dition  under  Protestantism.  The  state  of  the  slave 
women  of  the  South  was  that  of  serfs  of  the  body 
under  feudalism,  or  of  the  serf  peasant  women  of  Rus- 
sia. Nor  is  other  proof  of  this  statement  required  than 
the  hue  of  this  race,  no  longer  spoken  of  as  the 
blacks,  but  as  colored  people.  Let  the  condition  of 
woman  as  to  her  rights  of  person,  under  the  three 
great  divisions  of  Christianity,  be  answer  to  all  who 
without  examination  of  history,  or  the  customsof  ancient 
and  modern  times,  and  with  eyes  closed  to  these  most 
patent  facts,  so  falsely  assert  that  woman  has  been 
elevated  by  Christianity,  and  is  now  holding  a  posi- 
tion never  before  in  the  world  accorded  her.  But 
what  has  already  been  shown  of  her  degradation  under 
christian  teachings  and  laws  is  but  a  small  portion 
of  the  wrongs  woman  has  suffered  during  the  chris- 
tian centuries. 

Under  theory  of  the  divine  rights  of  man,  society 
has  everywhere  been  permeated  with  disregard  for 
woman's  rights  of  person.  Monarchs  not  posing  as 
spiritual  heads  of  their  people  have  yet  equally  made 
use  of  their  place  and  power  for  woman's  degradation, 
and  an  indefinite  fatherhood  outside  of  marriage. 
Augustus  of  Saxony,  King  of  Poland,  is  chiefly  re- 
nowned in  history  as  the  father  of  three  hundred 
illegitimate  children.31  Of  Charles  II.  not  alone  King 
of  England,  but  also  head  of  the  Anglican  Church, 
one  of  his  subjects  declared  him  to  be  the  father  of 
many  of  his  people  in  the  literal  as  well  as  in  the 
spiritual  sense.  Four  English  dukes  of  the  present 
day  trace  their  lineage  to  this  monarch,  who  left  no 
legitimate  descendants.32 

31.  Two  celebrated  women,  Augusta,  of  Koningsmark,  and  Madame  Dude, 
vant  (George  Sand),  traced  their  descent  to  this  king.— Letters  to  "New  York 
Tribune." 

32.  Adam  Badeau.— Aristocracy  in  England, 


164  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

H.  R.  H.  the  present  heir-apparent  to  the  English 
throne  bears  an  equally  unsavory  record.33  To  him 
and  his  aristocratic  companions  in  guilt  is  due  the 
support  and  protection  of  England's  notorious  and  in- 
famous purchase  and  sale,  outrage,  and  exploitation  of 
helpless  young  girls.  An  English  clergyman  writing 
the  "New  York  Sun,"  at  the  time  of  the  disclosures 
made  by  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  declared  he  had  in  his 
possession  a  list  of  the  names  of  the  royal  princes, 
dukes,  nobles,  and  leading  men  who  had  been  the 
principal  patrons  and  supporters  of  the  "gilded  hells" 
devoted  to  the  ruin  of  the  merest  children,  girls  from 
the  ages  of  nine  to  thirteen.34  The  reputation  of  the 
male  members  of  the  Hanoverian  dynasty  has  ever 
been  bad.  Trace  as  you  will  the  path  of  either 
ecclesiastical  or  temporal  rulers  claiming  authority 
by  "divine  right,"  and  you  will  find  the  way  marked 
with  the  remains  of  women  and  children  whose  life 
has  been  wrecked  by  man  under  plea  of  created  supe- 
riority. While  Italy  within  the  last  forty  years  has 
escaped  from  the  temporal  control  of  the  pope,  its 
kings  have  no  less  copied  the  immorality  of  the  "Vicar 
of  God";  the  predecessor  of  the  late  king  of  Italy  hav- 
ing left  thirty-three  illegitimate  children.  An  instance 
of  the  survival  of  the  feudal  idea  as  to  the  right  of 
the  lord  to  the  person  of  his  vassal  women  occurred  in 
Ireland  within  the  past  few  years,  graphically  de- 
scribed in  a  letter  upon  landlords,  from  Mr.  D.  R. 
Locke     (Nasby),   December,    1891,   in  which  he  says; 

One  was  shot  a  few  years  ago  and  a  great  ado  was 
made  about  it.  In  this  case  as  in  most  of  the  others 
it  was  not  a  question  of  rent.      My    Lord   had   visited 

33.  The  at  one  time  famous  "Alexandra  Limp,"  affecting  the  princess  of 
Wales,  and  copied  in  walk  by  ultra-fashionable  women,  was  said  to  be  due  lo  the 
effects  of  an  infamous  disease  contracted  by  the  princess  from  her  husband 

34.  Rev.  Dr.  Varley.— "New  York  Sun,"  July,  1885. 


MARQUETTE  165 

his  estates  to  see  how  much  more  money  could  be 
taken  out  of  his  tenants  and  his  lecherous  eye  hap- 
pened to  rest  upon  a  very  beautiful  girl,  the  eldest 
daughter  of  a  widow  with  seven  children.  Now  this 
beautiful  girl  was  betrothed  to  a  nice  sort  of  a  boy, 
who,  having  been  in  America,  knew  a  thing  or  two. 
My  Lord,  through  his  agent,  who  is  always  a  pimp  as 
well  as  a  brigand,  ordered  Kitty  to  come  to  the  castle. 
Kitty    knowing  very  well  what  that  meant,  refused. 

"Very  well,"  says  the  agent,  "yer  mother  is  in 
arrears  for  rent,  and  you  had  better  see  My  Lord,  or 
I  shall  be  compelled  to  evict  her." 

Kitty  knew  what  that  meant  also.  It  meant  that 
her  gray  haired  mother,  her  six  helpless  brothers  and 
sisters  would  be  pitched  out  by  the  roadside  to  die  of 
starvation  and  exposure,  and  so  Kitty  without  saying 
a  word  to  her  mother  or  any  one  else,  went  to  the 
castle  and  was  kept  there  three  days,  till  My  Lord 
was  tired  of  her,  when  she  was  permitted  to  go. 

She  went  to  her  lover,  like  an  honest  girl  as  she 
was,  and  told  him  she  would  not  marry  him,  but  re- 
fused to  give  any  reason. 

Finally  the  truth  was  wrenched  out  of  her,  and 
Mike  went  and  found  a  shot  gun  that  had  escaped  the 
eye  of  the  royal  constabulary,  and  he  got  powder  and 
shot  and  old  nails,  and  he  lay  behind  a  hedge  under 
a  tree  for  several  days.  Finally  one  day  My  Lord 
came  riding  by  all  so  gay  and  that  gun  went  off,  and 
'subsequent  proceedings  interested  him  no  more.' 
There  was  a  hole,  a  blessed  hole,  clear  through  him, 
and  he  never  was  so  good  a  man  as  before  because 
there  was  less  of  him. 

Then  Mike  went  and  told  Kitty  to  be  of  good  cheer 
and  not  be  cast  down,  that  the  little  difference  between 
him  and  My  Lord  had  been  happily  settled,  and  that 
they  would  be  married  as  soon  as  possible.  And  they 
were  married,  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  taking  in  my 
hand  the  very  hand  that  fired  the  blessed  shot  and  of 
seeing  the  wife,  to  avenge  whose  cruel  wrongs  the 
shot  was  fired. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  instance  in  modern  Ireland.     A 


1 66  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

certain  lord  Leitram  was  noted  a  few  years  since  for 
his  attempts  to  dishonor  the  wives  and  daughters  of 
the  peasantry  upon  his  vast  estate  comprising  90,000 
acres.  His  character  was  that  of  the  worst  feudal 
barons,  and  like  those  he  used  his  power  as  magis- 
trate and  noble,  in  addition  to  that  of  landlord,  to 
accomplish  his  purpose.  After  an  assault  upon  a  beau- 
tiful and  intelligent  girl,  by  a  brutal  retainer  of  his 
lordship,  her  character  assailed,  his  tenantry  finally 
declared  it  necessary  to  resort  to  the  last  means  in 
their  power  to  preserve  the  honor  of  their  wives  and 
daughters.  Six  men  were  chosen  as  the  instruments 
of  their  rude  justice,  and  among  them  the  brother  of 
this  girl,  upon  whom  the  leadership  fell.  They  took 
oath  to  be  true  to  the  end,  in  life  or  death,  raised  a 
sum  of  money,  purchased  arms,  and  seeking  a  conven- 
ient opportunity  shot  him  to  death.  Nor  were 
the  perpetrators  ever  discovered;  yet  it  is  now  known 
that  two  of  them  died  in  Australia,  two  in  the  Boer 
war  in  South  Africa,  and  the  leader  who  came  to 
the  United  States,  changing  his  name,  passed 
away  in  the  summer  of  1892  in  the  State  of  Penn- 
sylvania. 

Under  head  of  "A  Story  of  to-day,"  another  tale  is 
related  of  woman's  oppression  in  Ireland  aided  by  the 
Petty  Sessions  Bench  in  1880. 

Recently,  a  young  girl  named  Catherine  Cafferby, 
of  Belmullet,  in  County  Mayo — the  pink  of 
her  father's  family — fled  from  the  "domestic  service" 
of  a  landlord  as  absolute  as  Lord  Leitrim,  the 
moment  the  poor  creature  discovered  what  that 
"service"  customarily  involved.  The  great  man  had  the 
audacity  to  invoke  the  law  to  compel  her  to  return, 
as  she  had  not  given  statutable  notice  of  her  flight. 
She  clung  to  the  door-post  of  her  father's   cabin;  she 


MARQUETTE  167 

told  aloud  the  story  of  her  terror,  and  called  on  God 
and  man  to  save  her.  Her  tears,  her  shrieks,  her 
piteous  pleadings  were  all  in  vain.  The  Petty  Ses- 
sions Bench  ordered  her  back  to  the  landlord's  "ser- 
vice," or  else  to  pay  five  ponnds,  or  two  weeks  in  jail. 
This  is  not  a  story  of  Bulgaria  under  Murad  IV.  but  of 
Ireland  in  the  reign  of  the  present  sovereign.  That 
peasant  girl  went  to  jail  to  save  her  chastity.  If  she 
did  not  spend  a  fortnight  in  the  cells,  it  was  only 
because  friends  of  outraged  virtue,  justice,  and  human- 
ity paid  the  fine  when  the  story  reached  the  outer 
world. 

These  iniquities  have  taken  place  in  christian  lands36 
and  these  nefarious  outrages  upon  women  have  been 
enforced  by  the  christian  laws  of  both  church  and 
state.  The  degradation  and  unhappiness  of  the  hus- 
band at  the  infringement  of  the  lord's  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral upon  his  marital  rights,  has  been  depicted  by  many 
writers  but  history  has  been  quite  silent  upon  the  de- 
spair and  shame  of  the  wife.36  No  hope  appeared  for 
woman  anywhere.  The  Church  which  should  have  been 
the  great  conserver  of  morals  dragged  her  to  the  lowest 
depths  through  the  vileness  of  its  teachings  and  its 
priestly  customs.  The  State  which  should  have  defend- 
ed her  civil  rights  followed  the  example  of  the 
church  in  crushing  her  to  the  earth.  Christian  laws 
were  detrimental  to  woman  in  every  relation  of  life. 

35.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  Corinth  possessed  a  thousand  women 
who  were  devoted  to  the  service  of  its  idol,  the  Corinthian  Venus.  "To  Corin- 
thianize"  came  to  express  the  utmost  lewdness,  but  Corinth,  as  sunken  as  she 
was  in  sensual  pleasure,  was  not  under  the  pale  of  Christianity.  She  was  a 
heathen  city,  outside  of  that  light  which,  coming  into  the  world,  is  held  to  en- 
lighten every  man  that  accepts  it. 

36.  Les  Cuisinierset  les  marmitons  de  l'archevequesde  Vienne  avaient  impost 
un  tribut  sur  les  manages;  on  croit  que  certains  feuditaires  exigeaient  un  droit 
obscene  de  leur  vassaux  qui  se  mariaient,  quel  f  ut  transform^  ensuite  en  droit  de 
c uissage  consistant,  de  la  part  du  seigneur,  a  mettre  une  jambe  nue  dans  le  lit  des 
nouveaux  epoux.  Dans  d'autres  pays  l'homme  ne  pouvait  coucher  avec  ra  femme 
les  trois  premieres  nuits  sans  le  consentement  de  l'eveque  ou  du  seigneur  du 
fief.    Cesar  Q^niu.—Histoire  Universelle,  Vol.  IX,  p.  202-3. 


1 68  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

The  brilliant  French  author,  Legouve,37  gives  from 
among  the  popular  songs  of  Brittany  during  the  four- 
teenth century,  a  pathetic  ballad,  "The  baron  of 
Jauioz, "  which  vividly  depicts  the  condition  of  the 
peasant  women  of  France  at  that  date.  In  the  power 
of  the  male  members  of  her  family  over  her,  we  also 
find  an  exact  parallel  in  the  condition  of  English 
women  of  the  same  era.  The  moral  disease  thus 
represented  being  due  to  the  same  religious  teaching, 
the  change  of  country  and  language  but  more  fully 
serves  to  depict  the  condition  of  woman  everywhere  in 
Christendom  at  this  period. 

BRETON  BALLAD  OF  THE  FOURTEENTH 
CENTURY.  THE  BARON  OF  JAUIOZ. 


As  I  was  at  the  river  washing, 

I  heard  the  sighing  of  the  bird  of  death. 

"Good  little  Jina,  you  do  not  know  it,  but 

you  are  sold  to  the  Baron  of  Jauioz." 
Is  this  true,  my  mother,  that  I  have  heard? 
Is  it  true  that  I  was  sold  to  old  Jauioz? 
"My  poor  little  darling,  I  know  nothing  about  it; 

ask  your  father. " 
"My  nice  good  father,  tell  me  now— is  it  true 

that  I  am  sold  to  Loys  de  Jauioz?" 
"My  beloved  child,  I  know  nothing  about  it; 

ask  your  brother." 
Lannik,  my  brother,  tell  me  now — is  it  true 

that  I  am  sold  to  that  lord  there? 
"Yes  you  are    sold    to  the    Baron,    and  you    must    be 

off  at  once.   Your  price  is  paid — fifty  crowns  of  the 

white  silver  and  as  much   of   the  yellow   gold." 

II. 
She  had  not  gone  far  from  the  hamlet 

37.  Moral  History  of  Women. 


MARQUETTE  169 

when  she  heard   the   ringing  of.  the  bells;  whereat 

she  wept. 
"Adieu  Saint  Ann!   Adieu,  bells  of  my  fatherland; 
Bells  of  my  village  church,  adieu!" 

III. 

"Take  a  seat  and  rest  thee  till  the  repast  is  ready." 
The    lord    sat    near    the  fire;  his    beard   and    hair   all 

white,  and  his  eyes  like  living  coals. 
"Behold  the  young  maiden  whom  I  have  desired 

this  many  a  day!" 
"Come  my  child,  let  me  show  thee,  crown    by  crown, 

how  rich  I  am;  come,  count  with  me,  my    beauty, 

my  gold  and  my  silver." 
"I  should  like  better  to  be  with  my  mother 

counting  the  chips  on  the  fire." 
"Let  us  descend  into  the  cellar  and 

taste  of  the  wine  that  is  sweet  as  honey." 
"I  should  like  better  to  taste  the  meadow  stream 
Whereof  my  father's  horses  drink." 
"Come  with  me  from  shop  to  shop  to  buy  thee  a 

holiday  cloak." 
"I  should  better  like  a  linsey  petticoat, 

that  my  mother  has  woven  for  me." 
"Ah,  that  my  tongue  had  been  blistered  when 
I  was  such  a  fool  as  to  buy  thee! 
Since  nothing  will  comfort  thee." 

IV. 

"Dear  little  birds  as  you  fly,  I  pray  you 

listen  to  me, 
You  are  going  to  the  village  whither  I  cannot. 
You  are  merry  but  I  am  sad." 
"Remember  me  to  my  playmates, 
To  the  good  mother  who  brought  me  to  light, 
And    to    the    father    who    reared    me;     and   tell    my 

brother 
I  forgive  him." 


I70  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 


Two  or  three  months  have  passed  and  gone 

when  as  the  family  are  sleeping, 
A  sweet  voice  is  heard  at  the  door. 
"My    father,    my    mother,    for    God's    love    pray   for 

me; 
Your  daughter  lies  on  her  bier." 

This  ballad  founded  upon  historic  facts  represents 
the  social  life  of  Christendom  during  the  fourteenth 
century.  The  authority  of  the  son,  the  licentiousness 
of  the  lord,  the  powerlessness  of  the  mother,  the 
despair  of  the  daughter,  the  indifference  of  society, 
are  vividly  depicted  in  this  pathetic  ballad.  It  shows 
the  young  girl  regarded  as  a  piece  of  merchandise,  to 
be  bought  and  sold  at  the  whim  of  her  masters  who 
are  the  men  of  her  own  household  and  the  lord  of  the 
manor.  During  the  feudal  period  the  power  of  the 
son  was  nearly  absolute.  For  his  own  aggrandise- 
ment he  did  not  hesitate  to  rob  his  sisters,  or  sell 
them  into  lechery.38  Hopelessly  despairing  in  tone, 
this  ballad  gives  us  a  clear  picture  of  feudal  times 
when  chivalry  was  at  its  height,  and  the  church  had 
reached  its  ultimate  of  power.  Woman's  attitude 
to-day  is  the  echo  of  that  despair.  At  this  period  the 
condition  of  a  woman  was  not  even  tolerable  unless 
she  was  an  heiress,  with  fiefs  in  possession.89  Even 
then  she  was  deprived  of  her  property  in  case  of   loss 

38.  There  are  those  who  to  enrich  themselves  would  not  only  rob  their  sisters 
of  their  portion,  but  would  sell  for  money  the  honor  of  those  who  bear  their 
name.  The  authority  of  the  son  during  the  feudal  period  was  so  absolute  that 
the  father  and  mother  themselves  often  winked  at  this  hideous  traffic—  Ibid,  p. 
46. 

39.  Unless  an  heiress,  woman  possessed  no  social  importance;  unless  an  in 
mate  of  a  religious  house,  no  religious  position.  There  are  some  records  of  her 
in  this  last  position,  showing  what  constant  effort  and  strength  of  intellect  were 
demanded  from  her  to  thwart  the  machinations  of  abbots  and  monks.— Sketches 
of  Fontervault. 


MARQUETTE  171 

of  chastity,  of  which  it  was  the  constant  aim  to  deprive 
her.  Guardians,  next  of  kin,  and  if  none  such  existed, 
the  church  threw  constant  temptations  in  her  way. 
Ruffians  were  hired,  or  reckless  profligates  induced 
to  betray  her  under  plea  of  love  and  sympathy, 
well  paid  by  the  next  heir  for  their  treachery. 

Although  Sir  William  Blackstone  in  his  Commen- 
taries said  that  he  discovered  no  traces  of  marquette 
in  England,  a  reminiscence  of  that  custom  is  to  be 
found  in  the  "fine"  or  "permit"  known  in  that  country 
as  Redemption  of  Blood,  and  designated  asMerchetum 
Sanguinis,  by  Fleta.40  This  was  a  customary  pay. 
ment  made  by  a  tenant  to  his  lord  for  license  to  give 
his  daughter  in  marriage.  Such  redemption  was 
considered  a  special  mark  of  tenure  in  villeinage.41 
It  was  not  exacted  from  a  free  man,  which  is  corro- 
borative proof  of  its  origin  in  the  Jus  Prima Noctis,  of 
the  feudal  lord.  Of  the  free  man  this  fine  was  not 
permissible,  because  of  the  privilege  of  free  blood. 
Raepsaet,  M.  Hoffman,  Dr.  Karl  Schmidt,  and  other 
authors  writing  in  the  interest  of  the  church  and  find- 
ing it  impossible  to  deny  the  existence  of  some  power 
over  the  bride,  have  questioned  its  character,  declar- 
ing it  not  to  be  feudal,  but  a  spiritual  authority,  to 
guard  the  bride  by  enforcing  a  penitence  of  marital 
abstinence  of  one  to  three  days  after  the  nuptials.  It 
is  not  to  be  doubted  that  under  the  peculiar  teach- 
ings of  the  church  in  regard  to  the  uncleanliness  of 
marriage,  such  continence  was  at  a  certain  period 
part  of  church  law.42  Nevertheless  this  does  not  in- 
validate the  fact  that  a   widespread    contrary    custom 

40.  See  page  193.— Fleta. 

41.  Bracton,  26.  195,208.     Littleton's  Tenures,  55,  174,  sog. 

42.  Gratian,  Canon  for  Spain  in  633,  says  the  nuptial  robe  was  garnished  with 
white  and  purple  ribbons  as  a  sign  of  the  continence  to  which  young  married 
people  devoted  themselves  for  a  time. 


172  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

existed  in  feudal  times  and  at  a  still  later  period. 
The  present  usages  of  society  point  back  to  an  age. 
when  right  to  the  peasant's  bride  was  enforced  by  the 
lord.  A  reminiscence*3  of  this  period  is  to  be  found 
in  charivari  and  the  buying  off  of  a  party  of  this  char- 
acter with  refreshments  from  the  house,  or  with  money 
for  the  purchase  of  cigars  and  liquor.  Such  occur- 
rences constantly  fall  within  our  knowledge,  personally 
or  through  the  press.44  The  very  fact  of  such  perse- 
cution of  the  bridal  pair  is  a  symbol  of  that  custom 
under  which  the  retainers  of  the  feudal  lord  jeered 
and  flouted  the  bridegroom,  throwing  him  into  foul 
water,45  and  other  most  unseemly  practices.  To 
others  outsids  of  the  charivari  party  this  practice 
still  affords  amusement,  few  persons  inclining  to  in- 
terfere or  prohibit  such  pastimes.  Society  no  longer 
as  sharply  defined  as  in  the  feudal  period,  yet  has  pre- 
served in  this  practice  a  symbol  of  the  times  when 
even  the  highborn  dames  in  the  castle  equally  as 
degraded     as     its      lord,     amused     themselves     while 

43.  Eight  young  men,  living  in  the  vicinity  of  North  Rose,  Wayne  County, 
have  been  held  to  await  the  action  of  the  grand  jury  for  rioting.  A  young  mar- 
ried couple  named  Garlic  were  about  to  retire  for  the  night  when  they  were 
startled  by  the  appearance  of  a  party  of  men  in  the  yard.  The  party  immediately 
commenced  beating  on  pans,  discharging  guns  and  pistols,  pounding  with  clubs, 
screaming  and  kicking  at  the  doors  of  the  house.  The  bride  and  groom  were 
terrified,  but  finally  the  groom  mustered  enough  courage  to  demand  what  the 
men  wanted  there.  Shouts  of  "Give  us  lots  of  cider  or  we'll  horn  you  to  death," 
were  the  answers.  An  attempt  was  made  to  break  in  a  rear  door  of  the  house. 
The  bride  and  groom  and  John  Wager,  who  was  also  present  in  the  house,  braced 
the  doors  from  the  inside  to  prevent  a  forcible  entrance,  and  the  inmates  had  to 
defend  the  property  nearly  all  night.  The  horning  party,  at  last  weary  of  calling 
for  cider,  left  the  premises,  giving  an  extra  strong  fusillade  of  firearms  and  a 
series  of  yells  as  they  departed.  The  eight  young  men  were  arrested  a  few  days 
later  on  suspicion  of  being  in  the  horning  party.—  Press  Report,  Jan.  14,  1887. 

44.  Whenever  we  discover  symbolized  forms,  we  are  justified  in  inferring  that 
in  the  past  life  of  the  people  employing  them  there  were  corresponding  realities. 
McLennon. — Studies  in  Ancient  History,  p.  6. 

45.  He  was  thrown  into  the  moat  to  cool  his  ardor,  pelted  with  stones,  de- 
rided as  a  proud  and  envious  wretch. — MicheUt, 


MARQUETTE  I 73 

the  bride  was  in  the  company  of  the  lord 
by  ridiculing  and  torturing  the  husband  who 
in  anxiety  for  his  wife  ventured  too  near  the 
castle.  The  present  nearly  universal  custom  of  a 
wedding  journey  must  be  referred  in  its  origin  to 
the  same  period,  arising  from  an  inherited  tendency  in 
the  bride  and  groom  to  escape  the  jeers  and  ill  treat- 
ment that  in  past  ages  invariably  accompanied  en- 
trance into  the  married  state. 

•  In  some  European  countries  redemption  was  de- 
manded from  all  women,  not  alone  the  daughters  of 
villeins  and  serfs,  but  also  of  those  of  noble  birth  who 
were  freed  by  payment  of  a  ransom  in  silver 
known  as  the  "Maiden  Rents."  Lands  were  even  held 
under  Maiden  Redemption.46  In  Scotland  this  ransom 
became  known  as  "Marquette;"  Margaret  wife  of  Mal- 
colm Canmore,  generally  spoken  of  for  her  goodness 
as  Saint  Margaret,47  exercising  her  royal  influence  in 
1057  against  this  degradation  of  her  sex.  Number- 
less seditions  having  arisen  from  this  claim  upon  the 
bride  the  king  more  willingly  established  a  release  up- 
on the  payment  of  a  piece  of  silver,  a  demi-marc,  called 
marquette  (whence  the  name),  and  a  certain  number 
of  cows.  The  piece  of  silver  went  to  the  king,  the 
cows  to  the  queen,  and  from  that  period  cuissage  was 
known  as  the  droit  de  marquette.  But  this  nefarious 
custom  possessed  such  strength,  appealing  directly  to 
man's  basest  passions,  his  love  of  power,  his  profligacy 

46.  The  maids  redeerae  their  virginities  with  a  certain  piece  of  money,  and  by 
that  Terme  their  lands  are  held  to  this  day.  Heywoode.— History  0/  Women, 
London,  1624;  Lib.  7,  339. 

47.  Margaret  was  canonized  in  1251,  and  made  the  Patron  Saint  of  Scotland  in 
1673.  Several  of  the  Scotch  feudalry,  despite  royal  protestation,  kept  up  the  in- 
famous practice  until  a  late  date.  One  of  the  earls  of  Crawford,  a  truculent 
and  lustful  anarch,  popularly  known  and  dreaded  as  "Earl  Brant,"  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  was  probably  among  the  last  who  openly  claimed  leg-right,  the 
literal  translation  of  droit  dejambage. — Sketches  0/ Feudalism. 


174  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

— the  human  beast  within  him — that  it  continued  in 
existence  nearly  seven  hundred  years  after  the  royal 
edict  in  Scotland  against  its  practice.*8  This  vile 
power  extended  over  all  ranks  of  women;  the  king 
holding  it  over  the  daughters  of  the  grand  seigneur, 
the  suzerain  over  the  daughters  of  his  vassals;  the 
seigneur  over  the  daughters  of  his  serfs,  even  the 
judge  or  bailie  enforcing  this  right  upon  all  women 
who  passed  upon  his  road.49 

The  Church  has  ever  been  the  bulwark  of  this  base 
claim.  Holding  the  powers  of  penance  and  of  excom- 
munication, such  custom  could  neither  have  origina- 
ted nor  been  sustained  without  the  sanction  of  the 
church.60  At  this  date  the  privileges  of  the  lower  clergy 
were  extraordinary.  Even  in  England  they  were  not 
amenable  to  the  common  law;  they  ruled  the  laity  with 
iron  hand,  but  the  laity  possessed  no  power  over  the 
priesthood.61  All  appointments  were  in  priestly  hands, 
the  union  of  church  and  state  complete. 

God  himself  seemed  to  have  forsaken  woman,  and 
the  peasantry  lost  all  belief  in  the  justice  of  earth  or 
heaven.  The  customs  of  feudalism  which  were  akin  to 
the  customs    of   power   wherever   existing    throughout 

48.  The  feeling  is  common  in  the  north  that  a  laird,  or  chieftain,  getting  a  vas- 
sal's or  clansmen's  wife  or  daughter  with  child,  is  doing  her  a  great  honor. 
Burke. — Letters  from  an  English  Gentleman,  about  1730. 

49.  Pres  de  cet  Hang,  et  devant  sa  maison. 

50.  In  days  to  come  people  will  be  slow  to  believe  that  the  law  among  Chris- 
tian nations  went  beyond  anything  decreed  concerning  the  olden  slavery;  that  it 
wrote  down  as  an  actual  right  the  most  grievous  outrage  that  could  ever  wound 
man's  heart.  The  Lord  Spiritual  had  this  right  no  less  than  the  Lord  Temporal. 
The  parson  being  a  lord,  expressly  claimed  the  first  fruits  of  the  bride,  but  was 
willing  to  sell  his  rights  to  the  husband.  The  courts  of  Berne  openly  maintain 
that  this  right  grew  up  naturally.     Michelet. — La  Sorciere.  p,  62. 

51.  Among  the  rights  asserted  by  the  Protestant  clergy  in  the  middle  ages,  and 
which  caused  much  dispute,  was  exemption  from  lay  jurisdiction  even  in  cases  of 
felony. 

From  the  throne  downward  every  secular  office  was  dependent  upon  the 
church.     Froude. — Times  of  Erasmus  and  Luther, 


MARQUETTE  175 

Christendom  did  more  to  create  what  the  church 
terms  "infidelity"  than  all  the  reason  of  the  philoso- 
phers. No  human  being  is  so  degraded  as  not  to  pos- 
sess an  innate  sense  of  justice;  a  wrong  is  as  keenly 
felt  by  the  most  humble  and  ignorant  as  by  the  edu- 
cated and  refined,  its  effect  more  lasting  because  of 
the  impossibility  of  redress.  The  power  of  the 
seigneur  was  nearly  equal  to  that  of  the  king  himself. 
Manorial  courts  entirely  local  aided  the  seigneur  in 
the  enforcement  of  his  traditional  privileges62  at  the 
expense  of  the  villeins.  The  crown  possessed  no  jur- 
isdiction over  these  courts.  The  lord  held  the  right 
to  make  laws,  render  justice,  lay  imposts,  declare  war, 
coin  money,  dispose  of  the  goods  and  lives  of  his 
subjects,  and  other  prerogatives  still  more  closely 
touching  their  personal  rights,  especially  of  the  women 
living  in  his  dominion.53 

To  persons  not  conversant  with  the  history  of  feud- 
alism and  the  church  it  will  seem  impossible  that  such 
foulness  could  ever  have  been  part  of  christian  civili- 
zation. That  the  vices  they  have  been  taught  to  con- 
sider the  outgrowth  of  paganism,  and  as  the  worst 
heathendom  could  have  existed  in  Christian  Europe 
upheld  many  hundred  years  by  both  church  and  state 
will  strike  most  people  with  incredulity.  Such  how- 
ever is  the  truth;  we  are  compelled  to  admit  well 
attested  facts  of  history,  however  severe  a  blow  they 
strike  our  preconceived  beliefs. 

The  seigneural  tenure  of  the  feudal  period  was  a  law 
of  Christian  Europe  more  dishonorable  than  the  wor- 
ship of  Astarte    at  Babylon.64     In  order  to  fully  com- 

5Z  Among  these  de  voucher  avec  leur  femmes,  d'enlever  les  pr^mices  de  leurs 
filles. 

53.  H.  S.  Maine. 

54.  In   Babylon    every    young    woman   was     obliged   once   in   her  life  to 


176  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

prehend  the  vileness  of  marquette,  we  must  remember 
that  it  did  not  originate  in  a  pagan  country,  many 
thousand  years  since;  that  it  was  not  a  heathen  cus- 
tom transplanted  to  Europe  with  many  others  adopted 
by  the  church,55  but  that  it  arose  in  christian  countries 
a  thousand  years  after  the  origin  of  that  religion,  con- 
tinuing in  existence  until  within  the  last  century. 

The  attempt  made  by  some  modern  authors  to  deny 
that  the  claim  of  the  feudal  lord  to  the  person  of  his 
female  serf  upon  her  marriage  ever  existed,  on  the 
ground  that  statutes  sustaining  such  a  right  have  not 
been  discovered,  is  extremely  weak.56  The  authority 
of  custom  or  "unwritten  law"  is  still  almost  absolute. 
A  second  objection  that  such  customs  are  unchristian 
has  been  answered.  The  third  plea  in  opposition, 
namely  that  those  so  outraged,  so  oppressed,  left  no 
record  of  resistance  is  false.  Aside  from  the  fact  that 
education  was  everywhere  limited,  no  peasant  and 
but  few  of  the  nobility  knowing  how  to  read  or 
write,  and  within  the  church  learning  very  rare, 
we  have  indisputable  evidence  of  strong  character 
in  the  revolt  of  serfs  at  different  periods,  through 
which  concessions  were  gained;  the  final  refusal  of 
the  serfs  to  marry,  and  in  the  travesty  upon  religion 
known  as  the  "Black  Mass." 

offer  her  person  for  sale,  nor  was  she  permitted  to  leave  the  temple,  where  she  sat 
with  a  cord  about  her  waist,  until  some  stranger  taking  it  in  hand  led  her  away. 
The  money  thus  obtained  passed  into  the  treasury  of  the  temple  as  her  "purchase 
money,  or  redemption,  releasing  her  from  farther  prostitution,  and  permitting 
her  marriage,  which  was  forbidden  until  such  sale  had  beenconsu  nnriated.  " 

55.  Although  a  similar  custom  is  said  to  have  prevailed  in  India  under 
Brahaminical  rule,  it  must  be  remembered  that  wherever  found  it  is  an  accom- 
paniment of  the  Patriarchate,  and  under  some  form  of  religion  where  the  femi- 
nine is  no  longer  considered  a  portion  of  the  divinity,  or  woman  allowed  in  the 
priesthood. 

56.  It  has  been  too  readily  believed  that  the  wrong  was  formal,  not  real.  But 
the  price  laid  down  in  certain  countries  exceeded  the  means  of  almost  every 
peasant.  In  Scotland,  for  instance,  the  demand  was  for  several  cows,  a  price 
immense,  impossible. 


MARQUETTE  177 

We  can  not  measure  the  serfs  power  of  resistance 
by  the  same  standard  as  our  own.  The  degradation 
of  man  with  but  a  few  exceptions  was  as  great  as  that 
of  woman.  Civilly  and  educationally  the  peasant  man 
was  on  a  par  with  the  peasant  woman.  No  more  than 
she  had  he  a  voice  in  making  the  laws;  the  serf  was  vir- 
tually a  slave  under  the  absolute  dominion  of  his  lord. 
No  power  existed  for  him  higher  than  that  of  his  feu- 
dal superior.  It  is  nearly  impossible  to  realize  the 
hopeless  degraded  condition  of  the  peasant  serf  of  the 
middle  ages.  It  has  had  no  parallel  in  the  present 
century,  except  in  the  slavery  of  the  southern  states. 
Free  action,  free  speech,  free  thought  was  impossible. 
But  our  respect  for  humanity  is  increased  when  we 
know  that  these  vassals,  although  under  the  life  and 
death  power  of  their  lords,  did  not  tamely  submit  to 
the  indignities  enforced  upon  their  wives  and  daugh- 
ters. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that  the  historians  of 
that  period  were  generally  priests  by  whom  the  fact 
of  such  usage  or  custom  would  pass  unmentioned, 
especially  as  the  church  taught  that  woman  was 
created  to  meet  the  special  demands  of  man.  Other 
important  historical  facts  have  been  as  lightly  touched 
upon,  or  passed  over  entirely.  The  deification  of 
Julius  Caesar  while  Emperor  of  Rome,  is  scarcely 
referred  to  in  the  more  familiar  literary  sources  of 
Roman  history.  And  yet  his  worship  was  almost  uni- 
versal in  the  provinces,  where  he  was  adored  as  a  god. 
The  records  of  this  worship  are  only  to  be  found  in 
scattered  monuments  and  inscriptions  but  recently 
brought  to  light,  and  deciphered  within  the  last  few 
years.  Through  these  it  is  proven  that  there  was  an 
organized   worship   of    this   emperor,   and   an  order  of 


I78  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

consecrated  priests  devoted  to  him.57  Higgins  refers 
to  this  deification  of  Caesar.58  It  is  not  alone  proof  of 
the  low  condition  of  morality  at  this  period,  but  also 
of  the  universal  disbelief  in  woman's  authority  over, 
or  right  to  herself,  that  so  few  writers  upon  feudal 
subjects  have  treated  of  the  libidinous  powers  of  the 
lord  over  his  female  serfs.  Even  those  presenting  the 
evils  of  feudalism  in  other  respects,  have  merely  ex- 
pressed a  mild  surprise  that  christian  people  should 
have  admitted  that  right  of  the  lord  over  his  feminine 
vassals.  The  various  names  under  which  this  right 
wras  known  as  jus  primae  noctis,59  droit  de  seigneur,60 
droit  de  jambage,61  droit  de  cuissage,62  droit  d'  affor- 
age,63  droi  t  de  marquette,64  and  many  other  terms  too 
indelicate  for  repetition,  indicating  this  right  of  the 
lord  over  all  the  women  in  his  domain,  is  still  another 
incontestable  proof  of  the  universality  of  the  cus- 
tom. 

The  Mosaic  teaching  as  to  sacredness  of  "first  fruits," 
under  Judaism,  dedicated  to  the  Lord  of  Heaven, 
doubtless  was  in  part  the  origin  of  the  claim  of  the 
feudal  lord.  The  law  of  primogeniture,  or  pre- 
cedence of  the  first  born  son  as  the  beginning  of  "his 

57.  Christian  History,  First  Period,  by  Joseph  Henry  Allen. 

58.  In  the  history  of  Julius  Caesar  there  is  something  peculiarly  curious  and 
mythical.  Caesar  had  all  the  honors  paid  to  him  as  to  a  divine  person.  At  the 
end  of  five  years  a  festival  was  instituted  to  his  honor,  as  to  a  person  of  divine 
extraction.  A  college  of  priests  was  established  to  perform  the  rites  instituted 
for  the  occasion.  A  day  was  dedicated  to  him,  and  he  had  the  title  also  of  Julian 
Jove,  and  a  temple  was  erected  to  him. — Anacalypsis,  if  611. 

59.  Law  of  the  first  night. 

60.  The  lord's  right. 

61.  Leg  right— the  right  to  place  a  naked  leg  in  bed  with  the  bride. 

62.  Droit  de  cuissage,  e'est  le  droit  de  mettre  une  cuisse  dans  le  lit  d'une 
autre,  ou  de  coucher  avec  le  femme  d'un  vassal,  ou  d'un  serf. 

63.  Droit  d'afforge,  the  right  to  prey  upon  the  bride. 

64.  Droit  de  marquette,  took  its  name  in  Scotland  from  the  redemption  piece 
of  money,  ademi-mark,  marquette,  or  little  mark,  a  weight  of  gold  or  silver  used 
in  Great  Britain  and  many  other  European  countries. 


MARQUETTE  1 79 

father's  strength"  is  also  a  translation  from  Judaism 
into  the  customs  of  many  nations,  but  nowhere  under 
the  law  of  primogeniture  at  the  present  day  does  even 
a  first  born  daughter  receive  as  high  consideration  as 
a  first  born  son.  This  is  especially  noticeable  in  royal 
families.  It  is  not  therefore  singular  that  men  who 
took  the  literal  sense  of  the  bible  in  science,  who  be- 
lieved that  the  world  had  been  created  in  six  days, 
this  work  having  so  greatly  fatigued  the  Lord 
Almighty  as  to  make  rest  on  the  seventh  day  necessary 
for  him,  should  under  example  of  that  lord,  claim  the 
first  fruits  in  all  their  possessions.  No  Christians  of 
the  present  day,  except  the  Mormons,  so  fully  base 
their  lives  upon  the  teachings  of  the  bible  as  the 
Catholics  of  the  middle  ages.  If  we  accord  divine 
authority  to  this  book, accepting  the  literal  word  as  in- 
fallible and  sacred,  we  must  admit  that  both  Church 
and  State  were  at  this  period  in  unison  with  its  teach- 
ings, and  even  during  the  nineteenth  century  have  not 
freed  themselves  from  the  stigma  of  sustaining 
woman's  degradation;  the  theory  of  the  feudal  ages 
remains  the  same,  although  the  practice  is  somewhat 
different.  Legal  bigamy  or  polygamy,  non-marital 
unions,  are  common  in  every  large  city  of  Christen- 
dom. Government  license  has  created  a  class  in 
many  European  countries  devoted  to  the  most  degrad- 
ed lives  under  government  sanction,  protection,  and 
control;  in  England  known  as  "Queen's  Women," 
"Government  Women."  Thus  the  State  places  itself 
before  the  world  as  a  trafficker  in  women's  bodies  for 
the  vilest  purposes.  The  culmination  of  nearly  two 
thousand  years  of  christian  teaching  is  the  legaliza- 
tion of  vice  for  women  and  the  creation  of  a  new  crime. 
Previous   to  the   enactment   of   this   law   the  rules   of 


l8o  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

modern  jurisprudence  held  an  accused  person  as  inno- 
cent until  proven  guilty.  Under  this  legalization  of 
vice  all  women  within  a  certain  radius  of  recruiting, 
or  other  army  stations,  are  "suspects,"  looked  upon  as 
immoral,  and  liable  to  arrest,  examination,  and  regis- 
tration upon  government  books  as  government  women. 
It  required  seventeen  years  of  arduous  work  to  repeal 
this  law  in  England.  This  legalization  of  prostitution 
in  the  nineteenth  century  by  the  State  is  its  open 
approval  of  that  doctrine  of  the  Church  that  woman 
was  created  for  man.  It  is  an  acknowledgment  by 
men  that  vice  is  an  inherent  quality  of  their  natures. 
It  is  in  accord  with  man's  repeated  assertion  that  only 
through  means  of  a  class  of  women  pursuing  immor- 
ality as  a  business,  is  any  woman  safe  from  violence. 
In  a  letter  to  the  National  Woman  Suffrage  Convention 
at  St.  Louis,  May,  1879,  Mrs.  Josephine  E.  Butler,  Hon- 
orable Secretary  of  the  Federation  and  of  the  Ladies 
National  Association  for  the  Protection  of  Women, 
wrote : 

England  holds  a  peculiar  position  in  regard  to  the 
question.  She  was  the  last  to  adopt  this  system  of 
slavery,  and  she  adopted  it  in  that  thorough  manner 
which  characterizes  the  actions  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  In  no  other  country  has  prostitution  been  reg- 
istered by  law.  It  has  been  understood  by  the  Latin 
race,  even  when  morally  enervated,  that  the  law  could 
not  without  risk  of  losing  its  majesty  and  force  sanc- 
tion illegality  and  violate  justice.  In  England  alone 
the  regulations  are  law. 

This  legalization  of  vice,  which  is  the  endorsement 
of  the  "necessity"  of  impurity  of  man  and  the  institu- 
tion of  the  slavery  of  woman,  is  the  most  open  denial 
which  modern  times  have  seen  of  the  principle  of  the 
sacredness  of  the  individual  human  being.  An  Eng- 
lish high-class  journal  dared  to  demand  that   women 


MARQUETTE  l8l 

who  are  unchaste  shall  henceforth  be  dealt  with  "not 
as  human  beings,  but  as  foul  sewers,"  or  some  such 
"material  nuisance"  without  souls,  without  rights,  and 
without  responsibility.  When  the  leaders  of  public 
opinion  in  a  country  have  arrived  at  such  a  point  of 
combined  skepticism  and  despotism  as  to  recommend 
such  a  manner  of  dealing  with  human  beings,  there  is 
no  crime  which  that  country  may  not  presently  legal- 
ize, there  is  no  organization  of  murder,  no  conspiracy 
of  abominable  things  that  it  may  not,  and  in  due  time 
will  not — have  been  found  to  embrace  in  its  guilty 
methods.  Were  it  possible  to  secure  the  absolute 
physical  health  of  a  whole  province  or  an  entire  con- 
tinent by  the  destruction  of  one,  only  one  poor  and 
sinful  woman,  woe  to  that  nation  which  should  dare, 
by  that  single  act  of  destruction,  to  purchase  this 
advantage  to  the  many!  It  will  do  it  at  its  peril.  God 
will  take  account  of  the  deed  not  in  eternity  only, 
but  in  time,  it  may  be  in  the  next  or  even  in  the 
present  generation. 

Although  a  long  and  active  work  through  seventeen 
years  eventually  brought  about  the  repeal  of  this  law 
in  England,  it  still  continues  in  the  British  colonies, 
being  forced  upon  the  people  in  opposition  to  their 
own  action.  After  the  Cape  Parliament  of  the  Colony 
of  Good  Hope  had  repealed  the  law,  Sir  Bartle  Frere 
re-introduced  it  by  means  of  an  edict.*5  When  in 
London,  1882,  Sir  John  Pope  Hennessey,  Governor 
and  Commander  in  Chief  of  British  China,  was  waited 
upon  by  an  influential  deputation  of  members  of  par- 
liament and  others  to  whom  he  made  known  the  prac- 
tical workings  of  govermental  regulation  of  prostitu- 
tion introduced  by  England  into  that  colony.  He  did 
not  hesitate  to  characterize  it  as  a  system  of  slavery 
for  the  registered  women  and  girls.  He  also  declared 
that  they  detested  the  life  they  are  thus  compelled  to 
enter  having  both  a   dread  and  an   abhorrence  of  for- 

65.  Mrs.  Josephine  Butler,    so   stating. 


l82  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

eigners,  especially  foreign  sailors  and  soldiers.  He 
said  such  Chinese  girls  are  the  real  slaves  of  Hong 
Kong. 

Now  to  that  statement  I  adhere.  I  give  it  to  you  on 
the  full  authority  of  the  Governor  of  the  colony.  I 
have  been  five  years  looking  at  the  operation  of  this 
law  in  Hong  Kong,  and  that  is  the  result  to  which  I 
have  arrived  that,  under  the  flag  of  England  there  is 
slavery  there,  but  it  is  slavery  created  and  protected 
by  these  ordinances." 

The  relation  of  Christianity  to  this  treatment  of 
Chinese  women,  and  the  contempt  with  which  this 
religion  is  regarded  by  these  heathen,  is  most  fully 
shown  by  Sir  John's  conversation  with  the  leading 
Chinese  merchant  of  Canton,  as  given  by  himself, 
upon  the  material  progress  of  the  colony.  To  this 
merchant  Sir  Pope  said:  "Your  people  are  making  a 
large  fortune  here.  Why  not  send  down  your  second 
son  to  enter  the  house  of  the  Chinese  merchant  and 
learn  the  business  there?"  The  merchant  replied,  "I 
can  not  for  this  reason;  Hong  Kong  is  a  sink  of  in- 
iquity." Sir  Pope  Hennessey  answered.  "This  is  a 
Christian  colony;  we  have  been  here  now  for  forty 
years,  we  are  supposed  to  be  doing  the  best  we  can  to 
spread  civilization  and  Christianity."  The  Chinaman 
repeated:  "It  is  a  sink  of  iniquity  in  my  mind.  As 
Chinamen  we  think  of  domestic  and  family  life — 
we  reverence  such  things— but  how  do  I  see  the  poor 
Chinese  treated  in  this  colony?"  And  he  related 
stories  of  the  abuses  to  which  his  countrywomen 
were  subjected. 

In  repeating  this  conversation  to  Her  Majesty's  gov- 
ernment, Sir  Pope  Hennessey  declared  the  words  that 
the  merchant  of  Canton  who  called  Hong  Kong  a 
"sink  of    iniquity"  have  a  wide    application,  because 


MATQUETTE  183 

the  British  colony  at  Hong  Kong  is  geographically  a 
part  of  a  great  Empire,  an  empire  where  you  have 
missionaries  of  various  churches.  I  have  been  asked 
to  explain  the  curious  and  distressing  fact  that  Chris- 
tianity is  declining  in  China.  I  think  it  is  declining 
mainly  on  account  of  the  treaties  we  have 
forced  upon  the  Chinese;  but  I  will  frankly  tell  you, 
it  is  declining  also  because  they  see  these  girls  regis- 
tered in  such  houses  for  "Europeans"  and  made  prac- 
tically slaves  under  our  flag."88 

Nor  are  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  China,  the  sole 
foreign  countries  in  which  this  system  of  the  legalized 
moral  degradation  of  women  has  been  carried  by 
England,  nearly  one  hundred  places  in  India  showing 
the  same  vice  under  license  from  the  British  Govern- 
ment, even  to  bearing  the  same  name.87  Nor  have  innum- 
berable  petitions  and  protests  from  native  and  foreign 
ladies,  from  zenana  workers,  from  missionaries,  and 
even  from  all  ranks  of  the  resident  English  civil  ser- 
vice for  immediate  repeal  of  this  vilest  of  all  laws, 
been  of  the  least  effect.  So  thoroughly  imbued  are 
English  legislators  with  contempt  for  womanhood,  as 
not  only  to  maintain  these  outrageous  laws  but  also  to 
cause  fear  in  the  minds  of  those  women  who  for 
twenty  years  wrought  for  the  repeal  of  these  acts  in 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  of  their  again  being  intro- 
duced under  more  insidious  and  dangerous  form.68  A 
memorial  signed  by  a  number  of  native  born  and 
English  ladies  was  presented  to  the  Viceroy  praying 
that  the  age  of  protection  for  young  girls  be  raised. 
While    in    India   a    man's  dog,    horse,  elephant,  and 

66.  A  government  license  reads:  "Chinese  women  for  the  use  of  Europeans 
only." 

67.  Contagious  Disease  Acts 

68.  The  Emancipation  of  Women,  January,  1888. 


184  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

even  the  plants  of  his  garden  are  under  the  protection 
of  English  law,  his  daughter  of  ten  years  is  outside 
this  protection.89  The  penal  code  punishes  with  im- 
prisonment or  a  fine,  or  both,  the  man  who  injures 
an  animal  valued  at  ten  rupees;  if  the  animal  be 
worth  fifty  rupees  his  imprisonment  may  be  for  five 
years,  while  for  dishonestly  coaxing  his  neighbor's  dog 
to  follow  him,  the  punishment  is  three  years  im- 
prisonment, or  a  fine  or  both;  while  the  man  who  in- 
duces "consent"  from  a  girl-child  of  ten  years  escapes 
all  punishment. 

In  deference  to  the  bitter  opposition  these  acts 
created,  it  was  declared  that  legalized  prostitution 
was  abolished  in  British  India,  June  5th,  1888.  A 
statement  was  made  in  the  House  of  Commons  that 
the  contagious  disease  acts  had  been  suspended  in 
Bombay.  But  an  investigation  of  these  statements  by 
the  English  Social  Purity  Society,  proved  them  false, 
the  "Sentinel,"  its  organ,  stating,  June  1890,  that  upon 
inquiry  it  was  found  that  the  licensing  of  prostitution 
systematically  prevails  in  British  India,  and  is 
always  attended  with  results  most  disastrous  to  health 
of  body  as  well  as  morals  of  the  community.  The 
most  extraordinary  course  is  taken  towards  the  accom- 
plishment of  their  ends,  by  the  advocates  of  legalizing 
vice.     In  1888  having  failed    to   secure  an  act    of  the 

69.  The  penal  code  provides  for  the  punishment  of  a  man  who  commits  mis- 
chief by  injuring  an  animal  of  the  value  of  ten  rupees  or  upwards,  with  imprison- 
ment for  a  term  which  may  extend  to  two  years,  or  with  fine,  or  with  both.  If 
the  animal  be  worth  fifty  rupees,  the  punishment  may  be  for  five  years.  If  a  man 
induces  his  neighbor's  dog,  by  bait  or  otherwise,  to  follow  him  with  the  intention 
of  dishonestly  taking  the  dog  out  of  his  neighbor's  possession,  he  may  be  pun- 
ished with  imprisonment  for  three  years,  or  with  fine,  or  with  both.  But  while  a 
man's  dog,  his  horse,  his  elephant  are  taken  care  of  by  legislation;  while  the  very 
plants  in  his  garden  are  protected;  his  young  daughter,  the  light  of  his  eyes  and 
the  joy  of  his  home,  may  be  ruined  and  her  fair  fame  stolen  with  impunity,  pro- 
vided she  has  attained  the  age  of  ten  years  and  is  unmarried,  and  proof  is  want- 
ing that  she  has  resisted  her  seducer.** 


MARQUETTE  I 85 

legislature  of  the  state  of  New  York,  in  its  favor,  a 
society  to  this  end  was  formed  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  incorporated  as  a  "Voluntary  Association;"  bor- 
rowing the  name  used  in  England  at  time  its  women 
were  most  degraded  by  the  state.70  This  society 
grants  certificates  to  women  presenting  themselves  for 
examination.  And  thus  step  by  step  under  many 
forms  more  extended  than  even  under  feudal  law,  is 
woman's  moral  degradation  made  the  effort  of  the 
christian  civilization  of  to-day. 

The  "ten  thousand  licensed  women  of  the  townH  of 
the  City  of  Hamburg,  are  required  by  the  State  to 
show  certificates  that  they  regularly  attended  Church, 
and  also  partake  of  the  sacrament.  And  even  in 
Protestant  Berlin,  the  capital  of  Protestant  Prussia, 
the  Church  upon  demand  of  the  State  furnishes  certifi- 
cates of  their  having  partaken  of  holy  communion  to 
those  women  securing  license  to  lead  vicious  lives; 
the  very  symbol  and  body  of  him,  whom  the  chris- 
tian world  worships  as  its  saviour,  thus  becoming  the 
key  to  unlock  the  doors  of  woman's  moral  degra- 
dation.71 

The  fact  of  governments  lending  their  official  aid  to 
demoralization  of  woman  by  the  registration  system, 
shows  an  utter  debasement  of  law.  This  system  is 
directly  opposed  to  the  fundamental  principle  of  right, 
that  of  holding  of  the  accused  innocent  until  proven 
guilty,  which  until  now  has  been  recognized  as  a  part  of 
modern  law.  Under  the  registration  or  license  system, 
all  women  within  the  radius  of  its  action  are  under  sus- 

70.  The  New  York  Society  for  the  "Prevention  of  Diseases." 

71.  Of  Berlin,  August  Bebel  says:  "Now  things  are  neither  better  nor  worse 
in  Berlin  than  in  any  othei  large  town.  It  would  be  difficult  to  decide  which 
most  resembled  ancient  Babylon;  orthodox  Greek  St.  Petersburg,  Catholic  Rome 
Christian  Germanic  Berlin,  heathen  Paris,  puritan  London,  or  lively  Vienna.— 
Woman  in  the  Past,  Present  and  Future, 


1 86  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

picion;  all  women  are  held  as  morally  guilty  until 
they  prove  themselves  innocent.  Where  this  law  is  in 
force,  all  women  are  under  an  irresponsible  police 
surveillance,  liable  to  accusation,  arrest,  examination, 
imprisonment,  and  the  entrance  of  their  names  upon 
the  list  of  the  lewd  women  of  the  town.  Upon  this 
frightful  infraction  of  justice,  we  have  the  sentiments 
of  the  late  Sheldon  Amos,  when  Professor  of  Juris- 
prudence in  the  Law  College  of  London  University. 
In  "The  Science  of  Law,"  he  says,  in  reference  to 
this  very  wrong: 

The  loss  of  liberty  to  the  extent  to  which  it  exists, 
implies  a  degradation  of  the  State,  and,  if  persisted 
in,  can  only  lead  to  its  dissolution.  No  person  or 
class  of  persons  must  be  under  the  the  cringing  fear  of 
having  imputed  to  them  offenses  of  which  they  are  in- 
nocent, and  of  being  taken  into  custody  in  consequence 
of  such  imputation.  They  must  not  be  liable  to  be 
detained  in  custody  without  so  much  as  a  pri?na  jacie 
case  being  made  out,  such  as  in  the  opinion  of  a  re- 
sponsible  judicial  officer  leaves  a  presumption  of 
guilt.  They  must  not  be  liable  to  be  detained  for  an 
indefinite  time  without  having  the  question  of  their 
guilt  or  innocence  investigated  by  the  best  attainable 
methods.  When  the  fact  comes  to  be  inquired  into, 
the  best  attainable  methods  of  eliciting  the  truth 
must  be  used.  In  default  of  any  one  of  these  securities, 
public  liberty  must  be  said  to  be  proportionately  at  a 
very  low  ebb. 

Great  effort  has  been  made  to  introduce  this  S3rstem 
into  the  United  States,  and  a  National  Board  of 
Health,  created  by  Congress  in  1879,  is  carefully 
watched  lest  its  irresponsible  powers  lead  to  its 
encroachment  upon  the  liberties  and  personal 
rights  of  women.  A  resolution  adopted  March  5,  1881, 
at  a  meeting  of  the  New  York    committee   appointed 


MARQUETTE  187 

to  thwart  the  effort  to  license  vice  in  this  country, 
shows  the  need  of  its  watchful  care. 

Resolved,  That  this  committee  has  learned  with  much 
regret  and  apprehension  of  the  action  of  the  American 
Public  Health  Association,  at  its  late  annual  meeting 
in  New  Orleans,  in  adopting  a  sensational  report 
commending  European  governmental  regulation  of 
prostitution,  and  looking  to  the  introduction  in  this 
country,  with  modifications,  through  the  medium  of 
State  legislative  enactments  and  municipal  ordinances, 
of  a  kindred  immoral  system  of  State-regulated  social 
vice. 

Even  the  Latin  races  in  their  lowest  degradation 
did  not  put  the  sanction  of  law  upon  the  open  sale  of 
women  to  vice,  says  Mrs.  Butler.  This  remained  for 
the  Anglo-Saxon  and  Teutonic  races,  under  the  high- 
est christian  civilization  in  a  class  of  women  licensed 
by  the  State,  under  protection  and  name  of  the  head 
of  the  Anglican  Church,  as  "Queen's  Women,"  "Gov- 
ernment Women,"  both  Church  and  State  here  uniting 
in  the  nefarious  business  of  making  women,  by  law, 
the  slaves  of  man's  lowest  nature.  A  system  which 
openly  declares  "the  necessity"  for  woman's  foulest 
degradation,  in  order  to  protect  man  in  his  departure 
from  the  moral  law,  a  system  that  annually  sends  its 
tens  of  thousands  down  to  a  death  from  which  chris- 
tian society  grants  no  resurrection.  Similar  religious 
beliefs  beget  similar  results.  Times  change,  and 
with  them  methods,  but  as  long  as  the  foundation  of 
the  christian  church  of  every  name,  rests  upon  the 
belief  in  woman's  created  inferiority  to  man,  and  that 
she  brought  sin  into  the  world,  so  long  will  similar 
social,  industrial,  and  moral  results  follow.  The 
Catholic,  Greek,  and  Protestant  divisions,  all  degrade 
women  but  under  different  forms.     That  the  woman  of 


1 88  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

every  christian  land  fears  to  meet  man  in  a  secluded 
place  by  day  or  by  night,  is  of  itself  sufficient  proof  of 
the  low  state  of  christian  morality.  Several  states 
have  at  different  times  attempted  the  enactment  of 
similar  laws  through  bills  introduced  into  their  legis- 
latures ;  requiring  constant  watchfulness  on  part  of  the 
friends  of  social  purity  least  this  great  wrong  be  con- 
summated, a  wrong  primarily  agains  woman.  In  cer- 
tain cities,  as  St.  Louis,  where  such  registration  and 
license  was  for  sometime  demanded,  the  foulest  in- 
juries were  perpetrated  upon  entirely  innocent  and 
reputable  women,  injuries  for  which  they  had  no 
redress.72  Under  the  legalized  vice  system,  women  are 
slaves,  not  possessing  even  the  right  of  repudiating 
this  kind  of  life. 
A   gentleman    traveling    in    France,  1866,  relates   a 

72.  The  latest  attempt  for  licensing  vice  in  the  United  States  was  made  inNew 
Orleans,  1892,  in  the  form  of  an  ordinance  proposing  to  grant  to  Dr.  Wm.  Har- 
non  the  privilege  of  levying  an  inspection  tax  upon  those  known  as  "Public 
Women"  of  $1.50  a  week  for  fifteen  years. 

The  "Louisiana  Review"  said  of  it: 

"A  more  revolting  proposition  than  this  has  never  come  under  our  notice,  and 
we  are  amazed  that  the  health  committee  failed  to  detect  its  character,  however 
artfully  it  may  have  been  screened  by  the  pretext  that  it  was  intended  to  lessen 
the  harm  of  the  social  evil." 

The  "New  Delta,"  in  its  issue  of  August  31,  said: 

"The  queer  and  ill-favored  monopoly  which  the  ordinance  for  the  regulation 
of  house*  of  bad  repute  sought  to  establish  has  not  been  successful  on  the  first 
effort.  It  goes  back  to  a  committee.  Let  us  hope  that  it  will  remain  buried 
there  forever,  and  decent  people  be  saved  the  infliction  of  a  public  discussion  of 
the  miserable  scheme.  Such  systems  of  'regulation*  would  disgrace  the  devil, 
and  the  proposition  for  the  city  to  share  in  the  plunder  of  these  poor  wretches 
would  shame  a  Piute  village." 

The  Woman's  Journal,    September  19,  said: 

"It  is  well  that  this  measure  has  failed  on  the  first  attempt;  but  to  refer  a  mat- 
ter to  a  committee  is  not  necessarily  to  kill  it,  and  its  fate  in  the  committee 
should  be  closely  watched.  The  laws  establishing  the  state  regulation  of  vice  in 
England  were  smuggled  through  Parliament  about  1  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
when  half  the  members  were  absent  or  asleep;  but  it  took  seventeen  years  of 
painful  and  distasteful  agitation  to  repeal  them.  Prevention  of  bad  legislation 
is  better  than  cure." 

This  attempt  was  finally  defeated  through  the  energetic  opposition  and  work 
of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Lyle  Saxon. 


MARQUETTE  I 89 

most  pathetic  instance  of  the  attempted  escape  and 
the  forcible  return  to  the  house  of  infamy,  of  a  young 
girl  whose  person  there  was  at  the  command  of  every 
brute  who  chose  to  pay  the  price  of  her  master.  The 
tram  car  in  which  this  gentleman  was  riding,  crowded 
with  ladies  and  girls  of  refined  appearance,  was  sud- 
denly stopped  on  one  of  the  principal  streets  of  Havre, 
by  a  dense  crowd  swaying  back  and  forth  across  the 
track.     He  said  : 

I  then  became  aware  that  two  men,  tall  powerful 
fellows,  were  carrying  or  rather  trying  to  carry,  a 
young  woman  seemingly  between  sixteen  and  eighteen 
years  of  age,  who  occupied  herself  in  violently  clutch- 
ing at  everything  and  anything  from  a  lamp-post  to  a 
shop  door  handle,  a  railing,  and  the  pavement  itself. 

"As  a  matter  of  course,  her  body  swayed  between 
the  two  men,  half  dragging  on  the  pavement,  her 
clothing  besmeared  with  mud  and  blood.  For  the 
rough  handling  had  superadded  crimson  to  other 
stains.  This  proved  the  case  to  be  not  one  of  accident, 
although  the  screams,  shrieks  and  cries  of  the  poor 
girl  might  well  have  led  to  the  belief  of  her  having 
been  the  victim  of  a  run  over,  and  of  being  in  convul- 
sions of  acute  agony.  Her  agonizing  cries  for  'pity* 
'police,'  'protection,'  'help/  'murder,'  'Oh!  oh! 
oh!'  were  reiterated  incessantly.  Atone  particular 
moment  her  contortions,  and  the  violence  of  her  efforts 
to  free  herself,  or  even  to  bring  her  head  into  a  more 
convenient  position  than  hanging  face  downward, 
while  a  yard  or  so  of  long,  bedraggled  hair,  all  loose, 
was  sweeping  up  the  dirt  from  the  pavement,  were  so 
violent  that  her  two  carriers  had  to  let  her  slip  from 
their  grasp  on  to  the  flagstones. 

"All  this  time,  unmoved  by,  and  totally  indifferent 
to  her  piercing  cries,  stood  by,  or  strolled  calmly  on- 
ward with  the  crowd,  a  policeman  in  uniform  and  on 
duty.  My  enquiry  of,  'What  is  all  this  piece  of  work 
about?  Is  it  an  accident?  Is  the  woman  drunk,  or 
what?'    He  smilingly  answered:    'Oh!  not  drunk,  sir, 


I90  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

not  at  all,  not  at  all.  It's  only  one  of  those  young 
licensed  girls,  who  has  been  trying  to  escape  from  her 
house,  and  that's  her  master,  who  has  just  caught  her 
again,  and  is  carrying  her  back  to  his  place.  That's 
all!"  ' 

"I  was  powerless  to  help."  In  many  christian 
countries  a  traffic  in  girls  exists  under  government 
protection  and  license. 

Criminal  vice  chiefly  finds  its  feminine  prey  among 
the  poorest  and  most  helpless  class  who  are  the  vic- 
tims of  this  new  commercial  business,  its  customers 
scattered  in  every  christian  land,  and  accepting  their 
spoil  only  upon  the  certificate  of  some  reputable  phy- 
sician as  to  their  innocence  and  previous  uncontami- 
nation.  Crime,  vice,  and  cruelty,  were  never  before 
so  closely  united  in  one  infamous  system;  the  pur- 
chase of  young  innocence  by  old  iniquity  under  pro- 
tection of  law.73  A  bill  was  introduced  into  the  Eng- 
lish parliament  to  check  this  business  of  girl  destruc- 
tion, accompanied  by  proof  so  direct,  and  proof  of  the 
necessity  of  immediate  action  so  great,  that  it  was  not 
doubted  that  the  bill  would  pass  at  once.  Yet  it 
encountered  secret74  and  powerful  opposition,  was  final- 
ly referred  to  a  committee  already  so  overburdened  with 
work  and  so  far  behindhand  that  it  was  manifest  that 
the  bill  could  not  be  reached  in  years.  Gilded  vice 
laughed    at    this   result,   and    the    iniquitous    business 

73.  The  reporter,  while  the  committee  was  still  in  session,  went  to  a  procuress 
and  ordered  a  pretty  girl,  14  years  of  age,  certified  by  a  physician  to  be  good,  to 
be  delivered  to  his  order  as  "agent  for  gentleman  of  bo."  The  madame  accepted 
the  order,  and  in  a  short  time  produced  the  girl  certified.  The  reporter  investi- 
gated the  child's  history,  and  ascertained  that  her  father  was  dead  and  her 
mother  was  a  poor  working  woman.  The  girl  was  dressed  in  an  old  black  frock. 
Having  completed  the  purchase  of  the  girl,  the  reporter  hastened  to  arrange  for 
her  delivery  anywhere  and  to  any  person  designated  by  the  committee. 

74.  A  committee  composed  of  Cardinal  Manning,  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, Bishop  of  London  and  two  laymen,  examined  the  evidence  respecting 
criminal  vice  in  London,  becoming  satisfied  that  the  statements  made  by  the 

•Pall  Mall  Gazette"  were  substantially  true. 


MARQUETTE  igi 

proceeded  as  before.  At  that  period  the  "Pall  Mall 
Gazette"  entered  into  an  investigation  whose  results 
roused  the  whole  civilized  world.  Even  clergymen, 
ignoring  the  fact  that  christian  teaching  had  brought 
this  vice  into  being,  joined  the  press  in  scathing  re- 
proof of  patrician  London  iniquity.75  Societies  were 
formed  for  the  protection  of  young  girls  from  the  vice 
of  men  who  used  the  power  of  wealth  and  station  to 
corrupt  the  daughters  of  the  poor.78 

Under  English  christian  law  it  has  never  been  a 
crime  to  morally  destroy  a  girl  of  thirteen,  because 
under  that  law  she  is  held  responsible  for  her  own  un- 
doing. Girls  of  this  tender  age,  infants,  in  all  that 
pertains  to  the  control  of  property,  incapable  of  mak- 
ing a  legal  contract,  because  of  immaturity  of  under- 
standing, are  yet  held  by  that  law  as  of  age  to  protect 
themselves  from  a  seducer;  held  to  possess  sufficient 
judgment  to  thwart  all  the  wiles  of  men  old  in  years 
and  crime — of  men  protected  in  their  iniquities  by 
laws  of  their  own  making — men  shielded  by  the  legis- 
lation of  their  own  sex — men  who  escape  all  punish- 
ment because  men  alone  enact  the  laws.  It  is  not 
alone  the  waifs  of  society  who  fall  a  prey  to  the  sedu- 
cer, but  the  children  of  reputable  parents  and  good 
homes  are  waylaid  on  their  way  to  and  from  school 
and  lured  to  ruin.77      To  the  modern  ghoul  it  is  of  no 

75.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Spurgeon  preached  a  powerful  sermon  upon  the  patrician 
iniquity  of  London,  comparing  it  to  the  worst  sins  of  ancient  nations,  one  sure, 
sooner  or  later,  to  bring  destruction  upon  both  individual  and  nation. 

76.  When  you  see  a  girl  on  the  street  you  can  never  say  without  inquiry 
whether  she  is  one  of  the  most-to-be-condemned  or  the  most-to-be-pitied  of  her 
sex.  Many  of  them  find  themselves  where  they  are  because  of  a  too  trusting  dis- 
position; others  are  as  much  the  innocent  victims  of  crime  as  if  they  had  been 
stabbed  or  maimed  by  the  dagger  of  the  assassin.  *  *  *  These  women  con- 
stitute a  large  stading  army,  whose  numbers  no  one  can  calculate.  Gen.  Booth.— 
Darkest  England ',  51-56. 

77.  Children  as  they  go  to  and  from  school  are  waited  for  and  watched  until 
the  time  has  come  for  running  them  down.—  Report  of  the  Secret  Commission. 


192  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

moment  upon  whom  he  preys,  provided  his  victim  be 
but  young  and  innocent.  Lecky  has  portrayed  the 
standard  of  morals  of  the  present  day  as  far  higher 
than  in  pagan  Rome,  but  we  must  be  allowed  to 
doubt  this.  Immoral  sentiment  is  more  deftly  hidden, 
and  law  more  dependent  upon  public  opinion.  As 
soon  as  the  general  consensus  of  public  opinion  rises 
in  oppposition  to  girl  destruction,  the  law  will  regu- 
late itself  in  accordance  with  this  standard. 
Lord  Shaftesbury,  upon  this  point,  said  : 

The  "Pall  Mall  Gazette"  has  published  to  the  world 
disclosures  of  a  most  horrible,  and  many  would  think 
of  an  incredible  character.  Not  even  the  questionings 
of  peace  or  war  or  most  intricate  foreign  policy,  ought 
to  intefere  with  energetic  measures  to  suppress  these 
evils.  But  before  we  can  make  any  great  advance, 
there  must  be  a  considerable  move  of  public  opinion. 
It  must  be  vigorous  and  determined,  and  I  will  tell 
you  why.  You  may  depend  upon  it  that  no  govern- 
ment undertakes  a  question  of  a  really  important  and 
social  character  until  it  has  been  forced  upon  it  by 
the  voice  of  public  opinion.  Consequently  it  is  ■ 
our  duty  to  bring  the  voice  of  that  public  opinion  to 
bear  on  this  question.  Law  can  be  evaded  in  every 
possible  way.  The  only  thing  that  defies  evasion  is  a 
wide  spread  and  universally  extended  public  opinion. 
I  hope  that  we  shall  be  able  to  create  such  a  public 
opinion  throughout  the  country  that  persons  will  be 
induced  to  come  forward  voluntarily  and  give  evi- 
dence. The  plague  spot  is  too  deep,  too  wide,  and 
there  are  too  many  persons  interested  in  the  continu- 
ance of  it,  to  enable  us  easily  to  wipe  it  out.  Un- 
common energy  will  be  necessary,  and  I  hope  we  shall 
raise  such  an  amount  of  popular  indignation  that  the 
effect  will  be  irristible. 

But  the  public  feeling,  the  public  indignation 
against  these  enormities  did  not  rise  to  the  height  of 
restrictive   legislation.     The  policy  of  a  portion   both 


MARQUETTE  I93 

of  the  English  and  the  American  press  was  that  of 
suppression,  upon  the  plea  that  a  knowledge  of  these 
crimes  would  be  injurious  to  the  morals  of  society. 
Suppression  was  also  the  aim  of  the  "royal  princes, 
dukes,  nobles,  and  leading  men,"  who  were  the  prin- 
cipal patrons  and  supporters  of  this  nefarious  system. 
Suppression  is  the  strongest  opposing  weapon  against 
reform.  To  compel  change  needs  light  and  discussion. 
"It  is  only  when  wrongs  find  a  tongue  that  they  be- 
come righted."  Woman,  legally  powerless  in  the  do- 
ing away  with  abuses,  or  the  punishment  of  crime, 
must  depend  upon  publicity  for  the  creation  of  a  pub- 
lic sentiment  in  her  favor. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  connected  with 
disclosures  of  this  crime  against  womankind  was  the 
extent  to  which  men  of  all  ages  and  character  were 
found  identified  with  it.  The  world  of  business  and 
that  of  politics  were  equally  as  well  known  in  the 
haunts  of  vice  as  in  the  outside  world,  but  there  were 
judged  by  a  different  standard  and  their  relative  im- 
portance was  altogether  changed.78  It  was  a  literal 
day  of  judgment,  in  which  evil  character,  deftly  hid- 
den during  public  life,  was  there  unveiled. 

The  most  horribly  striking  fact  connected  with  this 
investigation  was  the  extreme  youth  of  these  victims. 
The  report  of  the  committee  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
1882,  declared  the  evidence  proved  beyond  doubt  that 
juvenile  vice  from  an  almost  incredibly  early  age  was 
increasing  at  an  appalling  extent  in  England,  and 
especially    in    London;     ten   thousand   girls,    thirteen, 

78.  It  seemed  a  strange  inverted  world,  that  in  which  I  lived  those  terrible 
weeks,  the  world  of  the  streets  and  brothel.  It  was  the  same,  and  yet  not  the 
same  as  the  world  of  business  and  the  world  of  politics.  I  heard  of  much  the 
same  people  in  the  house  of  ill-fame  as  those  of  whom  you  hear  in  caucuses,  in 
law  courts  and  on  'change;  but  all  were  judged  by  a  different  standard,  and  their 
relative  importance  was  altogether  changed.     Mr.  Stead.— "Pall  Mall  Gazette.'* 


194  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

fourteen,  and  fifteen  years  of  age,  had  been  drawn  into 
this  vice,  an  English  paper  declaring  the  ignorance 
of  these  girls  to  be  almost  incredible.  The  condition 
of  these  girl-children  is  far  more  horrible  than  that  of 
the  victims  of  infant  marriage  in  Syria,  Egypt,  India; 
the  infant  victims  of  christian  lands  are  more  fully 
destroyed,  soon  becoming  mental,  physical  and  moral 
wrecks;  alternate  imbecility  and  wild  screaming  being 
common  among  these  child  victims  of  vice.79 

Christianity  created  the  modern  brothel,  which  as 
closely  follows  in  the  wake  of  evangelical  work  of  the 
Moody  and  Sankey  style,  as  did  public  women  the 
ancient  church  councils.80  While  in  the  past  the  legal 
wrongs  of  woman  in  the  marriage  relation,  in  which 
she  is  robbed  of  name,  personality,  earnings,  children, 
had  a  tendency  to  drive  her  to  live  with  man  outside 
of  the  authority  of  church  or  state,  the  occupations 
recently  opened  to  her  whereby  she  can  gain  a  reput- 
able livelihood  by  her  own  exertions,  has  greatly  in- 
creased the  ranks  of  single  women.81  No  longer  com- 
pelled to  marry  for  a  home  or  position,  the  number  of 
young  girls  who  voluntarily  refrain  from  marriage,  by 
choice  living  single,  increases  each  year.  No  longer 
driven  to  immorality  for  bread,  a  great  diminution 
has  taken  place  in  the  ranks  of  "public  women."82  No 
longer   forced   by   want    into   this   life,  the   lessening 

yg.  Report  of  Secret  Commission, 

80.  An  immense  number  of  public  women  congregated  at  Nice  during  the 
time  of  its  Historic  Council,  which  settled  the  genuineness  of  the  books  of  the 
Bible. 

81.  So  fast  has  this  class  of  pecuniarily  independent  single  women  increased 
within  the  past  two  and  a  half  decades,  women  who  prefer  a  single  life  with  its 
personal  independence,  to  a  married  life  with  its  legal  dependence  and  restric- 
tions, as  to  call  from  the  "London  Times"  the  designation  of  "Third  Sex." 

82.  The  statistics  of  prostitution  show  that  the  great  proportion  of  those  who 
have  fallen  into  it  hava  been  impelled  by  the  most  extreme  poverty,  in  many  in- 
stances verging  upon  starvation. — Hist.  European  Morals^  2,  303. 


MARQUETTE  195 

number  of  such  women  not  meeting  the  requirements 
of  patrons  of  vice,  resulted  in  the  organization  of  a 
regular  system  for  the  abduction,  imprisonment,  sale, 
and  exportation  of  young  girls;  England  and  Germany 
most  largely  controlling  this  business,  although  Bel- 
gium, Holland  and  France,  Switzerland,  several  coun- 
ties of  South  America,  Canada,  and  the  United  States 
are  to  some  extent  also  engaged  in  this  most  infamous 
traffic.83 

Foreign  traffic  in  young  English  girls  was  known  to 
exist  long  before  the  revelation  of  the  "Pall  Mall 
Gazette"  made  English  people  aware  of  the  extent  of 
the  same  system  under  the  home  government.  It  was 
this  widely  extended  and  thoroughly  organized  com- 
merce in  girl-children  which  roused  a  few  people  to 
earnest  effort  against  it,  and  secured  the  formation  of 
a  society  called  "Prevention  of  Traffic  in  English 
Girls."  To  the  chairman  of  this  society,  Mr.  Benja- 
min Scott,  was  the  first  official  suggestion  due  that 
terminated  in  that  investigation  by  Editor  Stead, 
which  for  a  moment  shook  the  civilized  world,  and 
held  christian  England  to  light  as  a  center  of  the  vilest, 
most  odious,  most  criminal  slave  traffic  the  world 
ever  knew. 

London,  the  great  metropolis  of  christian  England, 
the  largest  city  of  ancient  or  modern  times,  is 
acknowledged  by  statisticians  and  sociologists  to  be 
the  point  where  crime,  vice,  despair,  and  misery  are 
found  in  their  deepest  depth  and  greatest  diversity. 
Not  Babylon  of  old,  whose  name  is  the  synonym  of 
all  that  is  vile;  not  Rome,  "Mother  of  Harlots,"  not 
Corinth,  in  whose  temple  a  thousand  women  were  kept 
for  prostitution  in  service   of    the   god,  not    the    most 

83.  Belgium  and  Holland  entered  into  an  agreement  a  few  years  since  for  its 
suppression. 


I96  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

savage  lands  in  all  their  barbarity  have  ever  shown  a 
thousandth  part  of  the  human  woe  to  be  found  in  the 
city  of  London,  that  culmination  of  modern  christian 
civilization.  The  nameless  crimes  of  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah,  the  vileness  of  ancient  Greece,  which  gar- 
nered its  most  heroic  men,  its  most  profound  philoso- 
phers, are  but  amusements  among  young  men  of  the 
highest  rank  in  England ;  West  End,  the  home  of 
rank  and  wealth,  of  university  education,  being  the 
central  hell  of  this  extended  radius  of  vice.  The  de- 
struction of  girl-children  by  old  men  is  paralleled  by 
the  self-destruction  of  boys  and  youth  through  vices  that 
society  hesitates  to  name.  Yet  each  is  the  result  of 
that  system  of  teaching  which  declares  woman  a  being 
divinely  created  for  the  use  and  sensual  gratification  of 
man. 

Having  for  years  tacitly  consented  to  the  destruction 
of  the  girl-children  of  its  poor,  at  the  rate  of  twenty 
thousand  annually,  England  was  yet  greatly  shocked 
to  find  its  boys  of  tender  age  and  aristocratic  lineage 
sunken  in  a  mire  of  immorality.  Eton,  the  highest  in- 
stitution of  its  kind  in  Great  Britain,  having  in  charge 
the  education  of  boys  connected  with  the  most  illus- 
trious English  families,  recently  became  the  source  of 
a  scandal  which  involved  a  great  number  of  students. 
An  extensive  secret  inquiry  resulted  in  the  suspension 
of  nearly  three  hundred  boys  after  full  confession.  Sup- 
plied with  unlimited  pocket  money,  they  had  bribed 
parkkeepers  and  the  police  to  silence. 

But  a  few  years  previous  to  these  disclosures  in  ref- 
erence to  Eton,  the  civilized  world  was  horrified  at  the 
discovery  of  the  vice  which  destroyed  Sodom,  among 
some  of  the  most  wealthy,  aristocratic  young  men 
of  London.    And  yet  with  knowledge  of  the  depravity 


MARQUETTE  197 

into  which  this  most  christian  city  had  sunk,  the  shocking 
character  of  the  disclosures  of  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette" 
in  refererence  to  the  traffic  in  young  girls,  involved 
details  of  vice  so  atrocious  as  to  exceed  belief  had  not 
the  testimony  been  of  the  most  convincing  character. 
These  mere  children  were  lured  by  the  most  diabolical 
vices  into  traps,  where  by  drugs,  force,  or  cajoling, 
tens  of  thousands  were  brought  to  moral  and  physical 
ruin,  innocent  victims  of  a  religious  theory  which 
through  the  christian  ages  has  trained  men  into  a  be- 
lief that  woman  was  but  created  as  a  plaything  for 
their  passions.  That  boys  of  the  highest  families,  in 
the  earliest  years  of  their  adolescence,  should  volun- 
tarily associate  with  those  vicious  women  who  form  a 
class  created  by  the  public  sentiment  of  man  as 
necessary  to  the  safety  of  the  feminine  element  in  house- 
holds, is  not  surprising  to  a  philosophic  observer.  It  was 
the  direct  result  of  an  adequate  cause.  The  wrong  to 
woman  passed  so  silently  by,  reached  its  culmination 
in  the  destruction  of  young  boys.  At  Eton,  suspen- 
sion was  tenderness,  expulsion  from  that  school  ruin- 
ing a  boy's  future. 

Succeeding  the  revelation  of  London  vice,  came 
divulgence  of  similar  shameless  practices  on  the  part 
of  high  government  officials  and  men  foremost  in  pub- 
lic life,  in  the  Canadian  Colonies.  In  Ottawa  and 
other  Canadian  cities  in  which  upon  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic  the  wholesale  despoliation  r>f  young  girls  but 
too  closely  paralleled  London  and  other  trans-Atlantic 
cities.  These  were  closely  followed  by  the  revelations 
in  regard  to  the  north-western  pineries  of  the 
United  States,  to  whose  camps  women  are  decoyed, 
under  pretense  of  good  situations  and  high  wages  into 
a  life  whose  horrors  are  not  equaled  in  any  other  part 


I98  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

of  the  christian  world ; — where  the  raw-hide  is  used 
to  compel  drinking  and  dancing,  and  high  stockades, 
bull-dogs  and  pistols  prevent  escape,  until  death, — 
happily  of  quick  occurrence, — releases  the  victim.  As 
elsewhere,  men  of  wealth  and  high  position,  law-mak- 
ers, are  identified  with  this  infamy.8* 

Among  the  notable  facts  due  to  an  investigation  of 
prostitution  is  that  its  support  largely  comes  from  mar- 
ried men,  the  "heads  of  families  ;"  men  of  mature  years, 
fathers  of  sons  and  daughters.  To  those  seemingly 
least  exposed  to  temptation  is  the  sustaining  of  this 
vice  due.  Men  of  influence  and  position  no  less  in  this 
country  than  in  England  frequent  disreputable  houses. 
In  1878,  the  body  of  a  woman  buried  in  the  principal 
cemetery  of  Syracuse,  N.  Y.  was  exhumed  on  sus- 
picion of  poison.  One  of  the  prominent  city  dailies 
said,  'she  commenced  leading  an  abandoned  life  and 
went  to  Saratoga  where  she  ran  a  large  establishment 
of  that  character.  Her  place  was  the  center  for  men 
of  influence  and  position.'  A  few  years  since  the 
Rev.  T.  De Witt  Talmage  accompanied  by  high  police 
officials  investigated  such  houses  in  person.  In  a 
sermon  based  upon  knowledge  there  obtained  Mr. 
Talmage  declared  those  dens  of  infamy  to  be  sup- 
ported by  married  men,  chiefly  of  the  better 
classes. 

He  found  them  to  be  judges  of  courts,  distinguished 
lawyers,-  officers  in  churches,  political  orators  that  talk 
on  the  Republican,  Democratic  and  Greenback  plat- 
forms about  God  and  good  morals  till  you  might 
almost  take  them  for  evangelists  expecting  a  thousand 

84.  When  Hon.  Henry  Blair  presented  a  petition,  asking  for  the  better  protec- 
tion of  girls,  he  said:  "Our  civilization  seems  to  have  developed  an  almost  un- 
known phase  of  crime  in  the  annals  of  the  race,  and  to-day  the  traffic  in  girls  and 
young  women  in  this  country,  especially  in  our  large  cities,  has  come  to  be  more 
disgraceful  and  worse  than  ever  was  that  in  the  girls  of  Circassia." 

This  Christianity  of  ours  has  much  to  answer  lot  .—Woman*  s  Tribune, 


MARQUETTE  I99 

converts  in  one  night.  On  the  night  of  our  explora- 
tion I  saw  their  carriages  leaving  these  dignitaries  at 
the  shambles  of  death.  Call  the  roll  in  the  house  of 
dissipation,  and  if  the  inmates  will  answer  you  will 
find  stock-brokers  from  Wall  street,  large  importers 
on  Broadway,  iron  merchants,  leather  merchants, 
wholesale  grocers  and  representatives  from  all  the 
wealthy  classes. 

But  I  have  something  to  tell  you  more  astonishing 
than  that  the  houses  of  iniquity  are  supported  by 
wealthy  people  when  I  tell  you  that  they  are  support- 
ed by  the  heads  of  families — fathers  and  husbands, 
with  the  awful  perjury  upon  them  of  broken  marriage 
vows;  and  while  many  of  them  keep  their  families  on 
niggardly  portions,  with  hardly  enough  to  sustain 
life,  have  their  thousands  for  the  diamonds  and  the 
wardrobe  and  equipage  of  iniquity.  In  the  name  of 
high  heaven  I  cry  out  against  this  popular  iniquity. 
Such  men  must  be  cast  out  from  social  life  and  from 
business  relations.  If  they  will  not  reform,  overboard 
with  them  from  all  decent  circles.  I  lift  one-half 
the  burden  of  malediction  from  the  un-pitied  head  of 
woman  and  hurl  it  upon  the  blasted  pate  of  offending 
man.  What  society  wants  is  a  new  division  of  its 
anathema. 

Without  the  support  of  the  heads  of  families,  in  one 
month  the  most  of  the  haunts  of  sin  in  New  York, 
Philadelphia  and  Boston,  would  crumble  into  ruin. 

That  one-half  of  the  children  born  into  the  world 
die  before  maturity,  is  acknowledged.  Physiologists 
and  philanthropists  seek  for  the  cause  except  where 
most  likely  to  be  found.  To  that  mysterious  interchange 
of  germs  and  life  principles,  whose  chemistry  is  still 
not  understood,  must  we  look  for  aid  in  solving  this 
great  problem.  These  questions  woman  is  forced  to 
consider;  their  investigation  belong  to  her  by  right, 
as  she  and  her  children  are  the  chief  victims.  She 
can  no  longer  close   her  lips  in  silence,  saying  it  does 


200  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

not  concern  me.  No  longer  does  the  modern  woman 
allow  her  husband  to  think  for  her;  she  is  breaking 
from  church  bonds,  from  the  laws  of  men  alone,  from 
all  the  restrictions  the  state  has  pressed  upon  her; 
she  is  no  longer  looking  without,  for  guidance,  but  is 
heeding  the  commands  of  her  own  soul. 

With  such  facts  before  us,  we  are  not  surprised  that 
women  are  found  who  prefer  the  freedom  and  private 
respect  accorded  to  a  mistress,  rather  than  the  re- 
strictions and  tyranny  of  the  marital  household.  Mr. 
Talmage  but  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  Anna  Dick- 
inson, who  took  upon  herself  an  acquaintance  with  this 
class  of  women.  Asking  one  women  living  as 
mistress  why  she  did  not  marry,  the  girl  contemptuous- 
ly ejaculated  : 

"Marry!  umph  !  I  too  well  know  what  my  mother 
suffered  in  the  married  state.  She  was  my  father's 
slave,  cruelly  treated,  subject  to  all  manner  of  abuse, 
neglected,  half-starved,  all  her  appeals  and  protests 
unheeded.  How  is  it  with  me?  I  am  free.  I  have 
all  the  money  I  want  to  use,  a  thing  my  mother  never 
had.  I  come  and  go  as  I  please,  something  my 
mother  could  never  do,  I  am  well  treated,  my 
mother  was  not.  Should  I  be  abused  there  is  no 
law  to  hold  me,  no  court  to  sit  upon  my  right  to  my 
own  child  as  there  was  with  my  mother.  No,  no,  no, 
I  am  infinitely  better  off  as  a  mistress  than  as  a 
wife." 

And  yet  so  pronounced  in  difference  are  the  moral 
codes  by  which  men  and  women  are  judged,  that  while 
living  together  in  un-legalized  marital  relations,  the  man 
is  welcomed  into  society,  is  looked  upon  as  fit  for  mar- 
riage with  the  most  innocent  young  girl,  while  should 
he  partially  condone  the  wrong  done  the  woman  whose 
life  under  present  condition  of  society  he  has  ruined, 
by   marriage    writh   her,  society  for  this  one  reputable 


MARQUETTE  201 

act  brands  him  as  most  unworthy.  It  is  but  a  few 
years  since  a  cavalry  officer  in  Washington  was  court- 
martialled,  found  guilty  and  sentenced  to  dismissal 
from  the  army  on  charge  of  conduct  unbecoming  an 
officer  and  a  gentleman,  because  of  his  legally  marry- 
ing a  woman  with  whom  he  had  been  living  un-mar- 
ried.  What  a  commentary  upon  christian  civiliza- 
tion! While  living  in  illicit  relation  with  this  woman, 
he  was  regarded  as  an  officer  and  a  gentleman;  when 
taking  upon  himself  a  legal  relation  he  was  court- 
martialled.  Lecky  says  :  "Much  of  our  own  feeling 
on  this  subject  is  due  to  laws  and  moral  systems 
which  were  founded  by  men  and  were  in  the  first  in- 
stance deigned  for  their  own  protection."  As  far  as 
he  has  examined  this  question,  Lecky  is  correct,  but 
he  has  failed  to  touch  the  primal  cause  of  such  laws 
and  systems; — the  church  doctrine  of  woman's  created 
inferiority  to  man.  View  these  questions  from  any 
stand-point  the  cause  remains  the  same.  To  this  cause 
we  trace  the  crime  and  criminals  of  society  to-day. 
To  this  cause  the  darkness  of  an  age  which  has  not 
yet  realized  that  civilization  means  a  recognition 
of  the  rights  of  others  at  every  point  of  contact. 

To  the  honor  of  the  pulpit  the  sins  of  men  are  occa- 
sionally made  the  subject  of  condemnation.  Evange- 
list Davidson  preaching  in  Syracuse,  N.  Y.  1887,  said: 
"I  pray  God  to  haste  the  day  when  vice  in  man  will 
be  marked  by  society  the  same  as  in  woman.  I  know 
all  the  popular  theories.  You  admit  it  is  a  fearful  thing 
for  a  woman.  There  are  poor  women  who  are  driven 
to  it  and  you  are  the  ones  who  drive  them.  You  smile 
at  the  one  thing  in  this  sermon  that  ought  to  make  a 
thinking  man  cry;  the  world  is  so  depraved  that  you 
laugh  at  the  very  idea  of  a  man's  saying  he  is  a  pure 
man." 


202  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Like  Lecky,  Mr.  Davidson  was  correct  as  far  as  he 
went,  but  he,  too,  failed  to  reach  the  cause  of  this 
double  code  of  morals.  He  did  not  touch  it  because 
in  striking  that,  he  would  strike  a  blow  at  the  very 
foundations  of  the  church. 

Christendom  is  percolated  with  immorality,  large 
cities  and  small  towns  alike  giving  daily  proof.  Leg- 
islative and  police  investigations  substantiate  this 
statement;  woman's  protective  agencies  and  private 
investigations  alike  proclaim  the  same  fact.  As  under 
the  same  organic  teachings  results  must  continue  the 
same,  we  find  the  United  States  no  more  free  from 
immorality  than  European  lands;  Catholic  countries 
no  more  vile  than  Protestant ;  although  feudal  law  no 
longer  exists,  men  still  rule  in  church  and  state. 
Men's  beliefs,  their  desires,  their  passions,  create  the 
laws  under  which  the  degradation  of  woman  still  con- 
tinues. Evil  consequences  are  not  confined  to  the 
past,  to  days  of  comparative  ignorance  and  tyranny; 
and  in  no  country  has  the  effect  of  belief  in  woman 
as  a  mere  instrument  for  man's  pleasure  produced 
more  horrible  results  than  in  our  own.  Not  to  speak 
of  the  effort  made  in  Congress  a  few  years  since  to 
place  all  women  of  the  country  under  suspect  law, 
many  cities,  among  them  Washington,  Philadelphia, 
Syracuse,86 have  at  differents  periods  taken  initial 
steps  towards  a  prohibition  of  a  woman's  appearing  in 
the  street  un-accompanied  by  male  escort,  during  the 
evening,  even  its  earliest  hours.  Such  ordinances, 
primarily  directed  against  working  girls  whose  chief 
time  for  out  of  door  exercise  and  recreation  is  during 
evening   hours,  and   to    that    other   rapidly  increasing 

85.  It  was  at  one  time  proposed  to  arrest  all  women  out  alone  in  the  city  of 
Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  after  9  o'clock  in  the  evening.  Had  the  ordinance  been  enacted, 
a  lady  of  mature  years  and  position  was  prepared  to  test  its  legality. 


MARQUETTE  203 

class  of  business  women,  physicans  and  others,  whose 
vocation  calls  them  out  at  all  hours  of  day  or  night; 
places  the  liberty  of  woman  at  the  option  of  every 
policeman,  as  though  she  were  a  criminal  or  a  slave.86 
There  is  also  proof  of  regularly  organized  kidnapping 
schemes  and  deportation  of  girls  for  the  vilest  pur- 
poses not  only  abroad,  but  to  the  pineries  and  lum- 
ber camps  of  Michigan  and  Wisconsin. 

Bloodhounds  kept  for  this  purpose,  or  hunting 
down  the  girls  with  shot  guns,  prevents  escape  when 
attempted.  In  January,  1887,  representative  Breen 
appeared  before  the  House  Judiciary  Committee  of 
the  Michigan  legislature,  confirming  the  charge  that 
a  regular  trade  in  young  girls  existed  between  Mil- 
waukee, Chicago  and  the  mining  regions  of  the  upper 
peninsula  of  that  state.87  In  case  of  conviction,  the 
punishment  is  totally  inadequate  to  the  crime  of  those 
men;  the  law  giving  only  one  year  of  imprisonment. 
The  freedom,  innocence  and  lives  of  such  women  are 
of  less  account  in  law  than  the   commonest   larceny  of 

86.  Eighteen  women  were  arrested  on  Monday  night  in  the  fifteenth  and 
twenty-ninth  police  precincts,  and  after  being  held  in  confinement  over  night, 
were  taken  before  Justice  Dufty  at  the  Jefferson  Market  Police  Court  Tuesday 
morning. 

"What  were  these  women  doing?"  asked  the  justice. 
"Nothing,"  replied  the  officer. 
"Then  why  did  you  arrest  them?" 

"We  have  to  do  it,  sir.  It  is  the  order  of  the  police  superintendent  when  we 
find  them  loitering  on  the  streets."— New  York  "Sunday  Sun,"  June  28,  1885. 

87.  Mr.  Breen  said  the  horrors  of  the  camps  into  which  these  girls  are  inveigled 
cannot  be  adequately  described.  There  is  no  escape  for  these  poor  creatures. 
In  one  case  a  girl  escaped  after  being  shot  in  the  leg,  and  took  refuge  in  a 
swamp.  Dogs  were  started  on  her  trail,  and  she  was  hunted  down  and  taken 
back  to  her  den.  In  another  case  a  girl  escaped  while  a  dance  was  going  on  at 
the  shanty  into  which  she  had  been  lured.  After  several  days  and  nights  of  pri- 
vation she  made  her  way  to  an  island  near  the  shore  in  Lake  Michigan,  where  a 
man  named  Stanley  lived.  But  the  dogs  and  human  bloodhounds  trailed  her, 
Stanley  was  overcome,  and  the  girl  was  taken  back.  The  law  now  provides  for 
imprisonment  of  only  one  year  in  case  of  conviction  of  any  connection  with  this 
traffic,  and  it  is  proposed  to  amend  it. —  Telegraphic  Report. 


204  WOMAM,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

property.  If  these  girls  were  robbed  of  fifty  cents 
the  law  would  punish  the  theft,  but  robbed  of  them- 
selves, enduring  such  brutal  outrages  that  life  con- 
tinues only  from  two  to  twelve  months,  there  have 
yet  no  laws  of  adequate  punishment  been  passed.  So 
little  attention  have  legislators  given,  that  policemen, 
judges  and  sheriffs  are  found  aiding  and  abetting 
the  proprietors  of  these  dens.88  Their  emissaries 
find  young  girls  between  thirteen  and  sixteen  the 
easiest  to  kidnap,  and  when  once  in  power  of  these 
men,  their  hair  is  cut  in  order  that  they  may  be 
known.  A  regular  system  of  transfer  of  the  girls  ex- 
ists between  the  many  hundred  such  dens,  where  clubs, 
whips,  and  irons  are  the  instruments  to  hold  them  in 
subjection.89  "The  New  York  World"  sent  a  represen- 
tative disguised  as  a  woodman  in  order  to  investigate 
the  truth  of  these  statements.  He  found  these  houses 
surrounded  by  stockades  thirty  feet  in  height,  the  one 
door  guarded  night  and  day  by  a  man  with  a  rifle,  while 
within  were  a  number  of  chained  bull-dogs  that  were 
let  loose  if  a  girl  attempted  escape.  Certain  men 
even  in  these  forest  depths  are  especially  noted  for  their 
cruelty  to  these  victims,  who  are  compelled  with  club 
and  whips  to  obey  the  master  of  the  den.  Suicide  the 
only  door  of  escape  is   frequent  among  these  girls,  who 

88.  Tales  of  a  horrible  character  reach  us  from  Michigan  and  other  northern 
lumber  districts  of  the  manner  in  which  girls  are  enticed  to  these  places  on  the 
promise  of  high  wages,  and  then  subjected  to  brutal  outrages  past  description. 
Some  three  hundred  of  these  dens  are  located.  These  girls  are  sold  by  the 
keepers,  passing  from  one  den  to  another,  from  one  degree  of  hellish  brutality  to 
another  (we  beg  pardon  of  all  brutes),  all  escape  guarded  against  by  ferocious 
bloodhounds.    The  maximum  of  life  is  two  months.— "Union  Labor  Journal." 

89.  Tony  Harden  used  to  keep  dives  in  Norway  and  Quinnesic,  and  it  is  said 
of  him  that  after  paying  a  constable  I12  to  bring  a  girl  back  who  had  tried  to 
escape,  he  beat  her  with  a  revolver  until  he  was  tired,  and  was  about  to  turn  a 
bull-dog  loose  at  her,  when  a  woodsman  appeared  and  stopped  him.  The  next 
spring  Harden  was  elected  justice  of  the  peace. — "Woman's  Standard." 


MARQUETTE  205 

almost  without  exception  were  secured  under  promise 
of  respectable  employment  at  Green  Bay,  Duluth,  or 
other  points.  From  forty  to  seventy-five  girls  are  found 
at  the  largest  of  such  pinery  dens. 

The  "World"  reporter    saw  them  strung    up    by  the 
thumbs,  beaten  with  clubs,  kicked  by  drunken   brutes 
and  driven  with  switches  over    the    snow.     He    after- 
wards   interviewed  a  rescued  girl  who  had  engaged  to 
work   in    a    lumberman's    hotel,    supposing  it  to  be  a 
respectable    place,    but    instead    she    was    taken  to  a 
rough    building,    surrounded    by    a   slab   fence  nearly 
twenty    feet  in  height,  within  which  was  a  cordon    of 
thirteen  bull  dogs  chained  to  iron  stakes  driven  in  the 
ground.    Many  of  the  details  given  by  this  girl  are  too 
horrible  for  relation.     Three  times  she  tried  to  escape 
and  three  times  she  was  caught  and  beaten.  The  visit- 
ors by  whom  she  tried  to  smuggle  notes    to    the  outer 
world  would  hand  them  to  the  proprietor,  who  liberally 
paid  for  such  treason.      Even    county    officers    visited 
the  place  to  drink  and  dance  with  the  girls,  who  were 
not  permitted  to  refuse  any  request  of  the  visitors.     A 
complaint  of  any  kind,  even  of  sickness,  meant  a  whip- 
ping, frequently  with  a  rawhide  upon  the  naked  body; 
some    times  with    the  butt  of  a  revolver.      Many  den- 
keepers  wield  a  powerful  influence    in  the    local    elec- 
tions;  one  of  the   worst  of  such  after   paying  the   con- 
stable twelve    dollars  for  the  return  of  a    girl  who  had 
tried  to    escape,  beat    her  with  a    revolver  until  tired 
and  was  then  only    prevented    by    a    woodman    from 
turning  loose  a  bull  dog    upon  her;  but  such    was  his 
political  influence  that    he  was   elected  justice   of  the 
peace  the  following  spring. 

Under  the  head  of  "White  Slaves  in  Michigan"    the 
"New    York  World"  of  January    24,   1887,  published  a 


206  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

special  dispatch  from  Detroit,  Mich.,  in  regard  to  the 
case  of  a  rescued  girl. 

Detroit,  Jan.  23. — One  of  the  infamous  resorts 
maintained  in  the  new  iron  region  in  the  upper  penin- 
sulas, near  the  Wisconsin  state  line,  was  raided  last 
September  by  the  Sheriff's  officers.  Hers  is  the  first 
word  to  reach  the  world  direct  from  one  of  those  dens. 
Many  of  the  details  she  gave  were  too  horrible  to  be 
even  hinted.  On  the  strength  of  inducements  now 
familiar,  she  went  to  work  in  a  lumberman's  hotel  in 
the  North.  She  went,  accompanied  by  another  girl, 
both  believing  the  situation  to  be  respectable.  She 
and  her  companion  were  taken  to  a  rough  two  story 
building,  four  and  a  half  miles  from  Iron  Mountain, 
in  Wisconsin.  The  house  was  surrounded  by  a  slab 
fence  nearly  twenty  feet  high,  within  which  about  the 
building  was  a  cordon  of  bull  dogs,  thirteen  in  number, 
chained  to  iron  stakes  driven  into  the  ground.  She  said. 
"Scarcely  a  day  passed  that  I  was  not  knocked  down 
and  kicked.  Several  times  when  I  was  undressed  for 
bed  I  was  beaten  with  a  rawhide  on  my  bare  back. 
There  were  always  from  eleven  to  thirty-two  girls  in 
the  house  and  I  did  not  fare  a  bit  worse  than  the  rest. 
A  complaint  of  any  kind,  even  of  sickness,  meant  a 
whipping  every  time.  When  the  log  drives  were  going 
on  there  would  be  hundreds  of  men  there  night  and 
day.  They  were  not  human  beings,  but  fiends,  and 
we  were  not  allowed  to  refuse  any  request  of  them.  Oh, 
it  was  awful,  awful!  I  would  rather  stay  in  this  prison 
until  I  die  than  to  go  back  there  for  one  day.  I  tried 
to  escape  three  times  and  was  caught.  They  unchained 
the  dogs  and  let  them  get  so  near  me  that  I  cried  out 
in  terror  and  begged  them  to  take  the  dogs  away  and 
I  would  go  back.  Then,  of  course,  I  was  beaten.  I 
tried,  too,  to  smuggle  out  notes  to  the  Sheriff  by  visit- 
ors, but  they  would  take  them  to  the  proprietor  in- 
stead and  he  would  pay  them.  Once  I  did  get  a  note 
to  the  deputy  sheriff  at  Florence,  Wis.,  and  he  came 
and  inquired,  but  the  proprietor  gave  him  $50  and  he 
went  away.     I  was  awfully  beaten  then.   While  I  lived 


MARQUETTE  207 

the  life,  from  March  until  September,  two  inmates  died, 
both  from  brutal  treatment.  They  were  as  good  as 
murdered.  Nearly  all  the  girls  came  without  knowing 
the  character  of  the  house  at  first  implored  to  get 
away.  The  county  officers  came  to  the  places  to  drink 
and  dance  with  the  girls.  They  are  controlled  by  a 
rich  man  in  Iron  Mountain,  who  owns  the  houses  and 
rents  them  for  $iooa  month.  I  am  twenty-four  years 
old  and  was  a  healthy  woman  when  I  went  into  the 
first  house,  weighing  156  pounds.  I  was  transferred 
to  the  house  from  which  I  was  released  by  the  officers 
in  August  last.  When  I  left  it  I  weighed  120.  I  now 
weigh  less.  When  I  go  home  I  will  be  a  good  woman, 
if  I  can  only  let  liquor  alone.  I  was  forced  to  drink 
that  while  there." 

The  traffic  in  girls  from  one  part  of  the  American 
continent  to  another  is  under  a  well  organized  plan 
that  seldom  meets  discovery,  although  a  trader  of  this 
character  is  now  serving  a  sentence  in  Sing  Sing 
prison,  N.  Y.,  for  sending  girls  to  Panama.  Three 
decoyed  young  girls  found  in  Jamaica,  were  happily  re- 
turned uninjured,  to  their  parents.90  From  Canada, 
girls  are  imported  to  the  large  cities  of  the  United 
States.  The  prices  paid  to  agents  depend  upon  a 
girl's  youth  and  beauty,  varying  from  $20  to  $200 
each.91  The  traffic  at  Ottawa  resembled  that  of  Lon- 
don   in    that  prominent    citizens,    leading  politicians, 

90.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Kerr,  of  the  Protestant  Church,  Colon,  recently  discovered 
three  young  girls  brought  to  the  Isthmus  for  improper  purposes.  He  took  the 
children  away,  and  with  the  assistance  of  others  returned  them  to  their  parents 
in  Jamaica. 

91.  Quebec,  April  n.— Wholesale  trading  in  young  and  innocent  girls  for  pur- 
poses of  prostitution  has  come  to  the  notice  of  the  authorities.  Disreputable 
houses  in  Chicago,  New  York,  Boston  and  other  cities  in  the  United  States  have 
agents  here,  wno  ingratiate  themselves  with  young  women  and  induce  them  to  go 
to  the  states,  where  they  are  drawn  into  a  life  of  infamy.  The  trade  has  been 
carried  on  to  an  alarming  extent,  sometimes  fifteen  girls  being  shipped  in  a  week. 
The  prices  paid  to  agents  depend  on  the  looks  of  the  girls,  and  vary  from  $20  to 
$200.  It  is  stated  that  over  fifty  girls  have  been  sent  to  one  Chicago  house  within 
a  year.— "Daily  Press." 


208  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

and  members  of  the  government  were  implicated.*2 
The  number  of  women  and  girls  constantly  reported 
"missing,,  is  startling  in  its  great  extent.  Stepping 
out  on  some  household  errand  for  a  moment  they  van- 
ish as  though  swallowed  by  the  earth.  A  few  years 
ago  the  "Chicago  Herald"  sent  one  of  its  reporters  into 
the  pineries  of  Wisconsin,  to  trace  a  little  girl  liv- 
ing on  State  street  of  that  city  who  went  one  evening 
to  get  a  pitcher  of  milk  and  did  not  return.  Not  a 
month,  scarcely  a  week  passes,  that  the  disappearance 
of  some  woman,  girl,  or  child,  is  not  chronicled 
through  the  press,  besides  the  infinitely  greater  num- 
bers of  whom  the  world  never  hears.  As  it  was  abroad, 
so  in  our  own  country,  no  energetic  steps  are  taken  to 
put  an  end  to  these  foul  wrongs.  Woman  herself  is 
needed  in  the  seats  of  justice;  woman  must  become  a 
responsible  factor  in  government  in  order  to  the  enact- 
ment of  laws  which  shall  protect  her  own  sex.  The 
spring  of  1892,  the  "Chicago  Herald"  called  attention  to 
the  continuance  of  this  condition  of  things. 

Marinette,  Wis.,  April  17. — Four  years  ago  when 
"The  Herald"  exposed  the  pinery  dens  of  Wisconsin, 
Marinette  was  known  as  the  wickedest  city  in  the 
country.  It  was  the  rendezvous  of  every  species  of 
bad  men.  Thugs,  thieves  and  gamblers  practically 
held  possession  of  the  town.  Their  influence  was  felt 
in  all  municipal  affairs.  Certain  officers  of  the  law 
seemed  in  active  sympathy  with  them,  and  it     was   al- 

92.  The  startling  revelations  within  the  past  few  days  as  to  the  traffic  at  Ottawa 
in  young  girls  of  from  12  to  14,  in  which  a  number  of  prominent  citizens  as  well 
as  several  leading  politicians  are  implicated,  have  caused  the  greatest  indigna- 
tion. Tuesday  night  a  meeting  was  held  under  the  auspices  of  the  Society  for 
the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children,  with  a  view  to  devising  some  means  by 
which  the  great  stain  on  the  capital's  good  name  might  be  removed.  It  was 
decided  that  the  matter  must  become  the  subject  of  special  legislation  at  the 
next  session  of  Parliament,  before  the  guilty  scoundrels  can  be  punished.  Oppo- 
sition is  expected  from  the  members  of  Parliament  who  are  implicated  in  the 
outrages.— "Daily  Press." 


MARQUETTE  209 

most  impossible  to  secure  the  arrest  and  conviction  of 
men  guilty  of  infamous  crimes.  Dives  of  the  vilest 
character  ran  open  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town. 
Their  inmates,  recruited  from  all  parts  of  the  country 
by  the  subtle  arts  of  well  known  procurers,  were  kept 
in  a  state  of  abject  slavery.  Iron  balls  and  chains, 
suffocating  cords  and  the  whistling  lash  were  used  on 
refractory  girls  and  women.  The  dens  were  surrounded 
by  stockades,  and  savage  dogs  were  kept  unmuzzled 
to  scare  those  who  might  try  to  escape.  Bodies  of 
ill-starred  victims  were  sometimes  found  in  the  woods, 
but  the  discovery  was  rarely  followed  by  investigation. 
The  dive  keepers  were  wealthy  and  knew  how  to  ease 
the  conscience  of  any  over-zealous  officer. 

The  outburst  of  indignation  which  followed  "The 
Herald's"  exposure  compelled  certain  reforms  in  the 
neighborhood.  Sporadic  efforts  were  made  to  clean 
out  the  criminal  element;  restrictions  were  placed 
on  saloons  and  gambling  houses;  stockades  and 
bloodhounds  were  removed  from  the  dives  near  the 
woods,  and  gradually  an  air  of  semi-decency  crept 
over  the  district.  But  the  snake  was  scotched,  not 
killed.  For  a  time  more  attention  was  paid  to  the 
proprieties,  vice  and  crime  were  not  so  open  as 
formerly.  By  degrees,  however,  the  old  conditions 
assumed  sway  again.  Games  of  every  kind  were  run 
openly  night  and  day,  dives  and  dance  halls  have 
been  thronged  and  the  usual  quota  of  men  from  the 
woods  deliberately  robbed  of  their  winter's  savings. 

Man's  assertion  that  he  protects  woman  is  false. 
Under  laws  solely  enacted  by  men  young  girls  in 
christian  countries  are  held  as  assenting  to  their  own 
degradation  at  an  age  so  tender  that  their  evidence 
would  not  be  received  in  courts  of  law.  Nor  are  these 
the  laws  of  a  remote  age  come  down  to  the  present  time. 
As  late  as  1889,  the  Kansas  State  Senate  voted  25  to  9 
that  a  girl  of  twelve  years  was  of  sufficiently  respon- 
sible age  "to  consent"  to  take  the  first  step  in  immor- 
ality; the  same   senate    afterwards    unanimously   vot- 


210  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

ing  that  a  boy  of  sixteen  years  was  not  old  enough  to 
decide  for  himself  in  regard  to  smoking  cigarettes.93 
It  should  be  remembered  that  youth  is  the  most  im- 
pressible season  of  life  as  well  as  the  most  inexpe. 
rienced.  Young  girls  from  thirteen  to  sixteen,  mere 
children,  are  most  easily  decoyed,  their  youth  and  in- 
nocence causing  them  to  fall  the  readiest  prey;  and 
scarcely  a  large  city  but  proves  the  existence  of 
men  of  mature  years  whose  aim  is  the  destruc- 
tion of  such  young  girls.9*  The  state  of  Del- 
aware yet  more  infamous,  still  retaining  seven  years 
as  the  "age  of  consent."  Seven  short  years  of  baby 
life  in  that  state  is  legally  held  to  transform  a  girl- 
infant  into  a  being  with  capacity  to  consent  to  an  act 
of  which  she  neither  knows  the  name  nor  the  conse- 
quences, her  "consent"  freeing  from  responsibility  or 
punishment,  the  villain,  youthful  or  aged,  who  chooses 
to  assault  such  baby  victim  of  man-made  laws.95 
While  the  doors  of  irresponsible  vice  are  legally 
thrown  open  to  men  of  all  ages  with  girl  victims  as 
their  prey,  the  restrictions  against  marriage  with  a 
minor  without  the  parents'  consent  are  in  most  states 
very  severe.  That  the  girl-wife  herself  has  consented 
to  the  marriage  ceremony  is  of  no  weight.  Where  a 
legitimate  union  is  under  consideration  she  is  held  as 
possessing  no  power  to  form  a  contract  and  can  be 
arrested  under  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  and  kept  from 
her  husband  at  her  father's  pleasure.  Instances  have  also 

93.  "Topeka  Leader." 

94.  In  Troy,  N.  Y.,  in  the  fall  of  1891,  discovery  was  made  of  an  organized 
plan  to  ravish  little  girls.  It  numbered  in  its  ranks  married  men,  members  of  the 
police  force,  and  men  well  known  in  business  and  church  circles.  With  this  dis- 
covery came  the  statement  from  other  cities  that  like  offenders  were  common.— 
"The  Daily  Press." 

95.  Persistent  effort  has  been  made  by  women  to  stop  these  great  wrongs,  but 
having  no  power  in  legislation,  her  prayers  and  petitions  have  met  with  but  scant 
success. 


MARQUETTE  211 

occurred  where  the  wife  has  been  punished  by  him  for 
thus  daring  to  marry.9*  Both  the  husband  and  the 
officiating  clergyman  are  also  held  amenable,  the  former 
under  charge  of  abduction,  the  latter  as  an  accessory 
in  performing  the  marriage  ceremony. 

A  significant  fact  is  the  rapid  increase  of  child  crim- 
inals throughout  Christendom  ;  Germany,  France  and 
England  showing  one  hundred  per  cent  within  ten 
years,  while  in  the  United  States  more  than  one-half 
the  inmates  of  state  prisons  are  under  thirty  years  of 
age.  From  criminals  it  is  necessary  to  look  back  to 
crime-making  men  sitting  in  earth's  loftiest  places,  and 
note  the  fact  that  crime  germs  are  not  alone  gener- 
ated with  the  child,  but  that  through  the  gestative 
period  the  mother,  a  religious  and  legal  slave,  strug- 
gles  between  a  newly  awakened  sense  of  that  respon- 
sibility which  within  the  last  four  decades  has  come 
to  woman,  and  the  crushing  influence  of  religious, 
political  and  family  despotism  which  still  overshadows 
her.  Moralists  have  long  striven  for  the  suppression  of 
immorality  by  efforts  directed  to  the  reformation  of 
corrupt  women  alone;  for  two  reasons  they  have  been 
unsuccessful. 

First :  the  majority  of  women  entering  this  life  are 
found  to  have  done  so  under  the  pressure  of  abject 
poverty,  and  as  long  as  the  conditions  of  society  con- 
tinue to  foster  poverty  for  woman  it  was  impossible 
to  create  a  marked  change  in  morals. 

Second:  all  efforts  were  directed  towards  the  smallest 
and  least  culpable  class,  as  it  has  been  proven  that  ten 

96.  Married  at  Thirteen  Years.— Maud  Pearl  Johnson,  a  thirteen-year-old 
girl  of  Fulton,  who  was  married  to  Franklin  Foster  of  that  place  on  Monday,  has 
been  placed  in  the  State  Industrial  School  in  Rochester  under  sentence  by  Police 
Justice  Spencer  of  Fulton.  Foster  is  a  widower  with  three  children.  The  min- 
ister at  Fairdale  who  performed  the  ceremony  is  said  to  have  been  fined  %i  for 
cruelty  to  children.    The  poor  authorities  arrested  the  young  wife  for  vagrancy. 


212  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

men  of  immoral  life  are  required  for  the  support  of 
one  woman  of  like  character.  In  London  alone  with 
its  population  of  five  millions,  100,000  women,  one- 
fiftieth  of  its  population  are  thus  enumerated,  requiring 
1,000,000  men,  one-fifth  of  its  population,  for  their 
support.  Recognizing  the  fact  that  men,  not  women, 
were  most  sunken  in  vice,  the  number  leading  vicious 
lives  very  much  larger,  the  degradation  of  these  men 
very  much  greater,  an  Italian  lady,  Madam  Venturi, 
at  the  International  Conference  of  the  British  Conti- 
nental and  General  Federation  for  the  abolition  of 
governmental  regulation  of  prostitution,  while  making 
a  brief  eloquent  address  upon  the  general  subject  of 
rescue  work,  referred  to  the  great  importance  of  re- 
claiming men  as  the  fundamental  work  upon  which 
others  should  be  built  up.  Teach  men,  she  said,  to  un- 
derstand that  he  who  degrades  a  fellow  creature,  com- 
mits a  crime,  the  crime  of  high  treason  against 
humanity.  In  quick  response  to  those  fitly-spoken 
words,  the  women  of  many  countries  combined  in  the 
work  of  man's  reformation  in  an  organization  known 
as  the  "White  Cross  Society"  founded  in  1886,  by  Miss 
Ellice  Hopkins  of  England,  and  now  possessing 
branches  in  every  part  of  the  civilized  world.97  To 
this  society,  men  alone  belong;  its  work  is  of  a  still 
broader  character  than  mere  reformation  of  the  vi- 
cious ;  it  seeks  to  train  young  men  and  boys  to  a  proper 
respect  for  woman  and  for  themselves. 

As  the  world  is  indebted  to  Christine  of  Pisa  for 
the  first  public  protest  against  the  immorality  of 
Christendom,  so  to  Mrs.  Josephine  Butler,98  Madam 
Venturi,  and  Miss  Ellice  Hopkins  are  due  the  inaugur- 

97.    Africa,  Australia,  India,  Canada  the  United  States  among  the  number. 
98.  Who  gave  seventeen  years  of  her  life  to  work  for  the  overthrow  of  govern- 
ment legislation  of  vice  in  England. 


MARQUETTE  213 

ation  of  a  new  moral  standard  for  man  whose  results 
must  be  of  incalculable  value  to  the  world.  The 
"White  Cross"  is  a  simply  organized  society  without 
an  admission  fee,  but  requiring  adherence  to  a  five- 
fold obligation  binding  its  members  to  purity  of 
thought  and  action,"  and  maintaining  that  the  law  of 
chastity  is  equally  binding  on  men  and  women.  The 
International  Federation,  a  union  existing  in  several 
European  countries,  its  chief  object,  work  against 
state  protection  of  vice,  roused  public  thought  in  this 
direction  as  never  before.  People  began  to  compre- 
hend that  a  large  vicious  class  was  common  to  every 
community,  a  class  whose  reclamation  had  never  been 
systematically  attempted,  never  thought  necessary  or 
even  deemed  possible,  because  of  the  religious  and 
social  training  that  taught  indulgence  in  vice  to  be  a 
necessity  of  man's  nature;  and  the  co-ordinate  state- 
ment, that  protection  to  the  majority  of  women  was  to 
be  secured  only  through  the  debasement  and  moral 
degradation  of  the  minority.  For  many  hundreds 
of  years  this  has  been  man's  treatment  of  the  question 
of  vice  in  Christian  lands. 

But  as  soon  as  advancing  civilization  permitted 
woman's  thought  to  be  publicly  heard,  vice  in  man 
was  declared  to  be  upon  the  same  basis  as  vice  in 
woman.  Had  not  man  been  trained  by  his  religion 
into  a  belief  that  woman  was  created  for  him,  had  not 
the  church  for  1800  and  more  years  preached  woman's 
moral  debasement,  the    long   course  of  legislation    for 

99.— i-  To  treat  all  women  with  respect,  and  endeavor  to  protect  them  from 
wrong  and  degradation. 

2.  To  endeavor  to  put  down  all  indecent  language  and  coarse  jests. 

3.  To  maintain  the  law  of  purity  as  equally  binding  upon  men  and  women. 

4.  To  endeavor  to  spread  these  principles  among  my  companions,  and  try  to 
help  my  younger  brothers. 

5.  To  use  every  possible  means  to  fulfil  the  command:    "Keep  Thyself  Pure." 


214  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

them  as  slaves  would  never  have  taken  place,  nor  the 
obstacles  in  way  of  change  been  so  numerous  and  so 
persistent.  For  nine  years  the  Criminal  Reform  Act 
was  before  Parliament.  During  that  period,  petitions, 
speeches  and  appeals  of  every  kind  in  favor  of  its 
passage  were  made  by  those  outside  the  halls  of  legis- 
lation aided  by  a  few  honest  men  within.  But  the 
vicious  and  immoral  fought  the  act  with  energy, 
despite  the  fact  that  the  women  of  their  own  families 
were  exposed  to  destruction  through  government  pro- 
tected iniquity.  The  bitter  opposition  by  legislators 
to  this  act,  is  an  additional  proof  that  woman  cannot 
trust  man  in  the  state  to  any  greater  extent  than  in 
the  church. 

Until  woman  holds  political  power  in  her  own  hands, 
her  efforts  for  protective  legislation  will  be  arduous 
and  protracted.  Among  the  customs  of  the  early 
christian  church,  we  are  able  to  trace  the  inception 
of  marquette,  the  mundium,  the  legalization  of  vice 
and  crimes  of  kindred  character.  With  exception  of 
among  some  savage  races,  that  woman  should  appear 
unclothed  before  man,  has  been  regarded  as  evidence 
of  the  deepest  sensuality,  yet  throughout  the  history  of 
Christianity  from  its  earliest  years  when  women  were 
required  to  divest  themselves  of  clothing  before  baptism 
down  to  the  Endowment  House  ceremonies  of  the 
Mormon  Church,  we  constantly  find  proof  of  like  sen- 
sual exactions  by  the  "Fathers,"  priests  and  lay  mascu- 
linity of  the  church.  During  the  earliest  days  of  Chris- 
tianity, women  were  baptized  quite  nude,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  men,  by  men,  their  bodies  being  afterwards 
anointed  with  oil  by  the  priest  who  had  baptized 
them.  One  of  the  earliest  schisms  in  the  church 
arose  from  the  protest  of  women  against  this  indignity, 


MARQUETTE  21$ 

their  demand  to  be  allowed  to  baptize  those  of  their 
own  sex,  and  the  opposition  of  men  to  this 
demand.100 

The  early  bishops  of  the  church  strenously  used 
their  influence  against  the  baptism  of  nude  women  by 
elders  of  their  own  sex.  Women  were  sometimes 
brought  entirely  nude  upon  the  stage  at  Rome,  but  it 
was  in  connection  with  religious  representation,  the 
theater  at  that  period  being  an  element  of  religious 
teaching.  Lecky  speaks  of  the  undisguised  sensuality 
of  this  practice.101  What  must  be  our  conception  of  a 
christian  custom  that  placed  nude  maidens  and  wives 
in  the  very  hands  of  men,  not  alone  for  baptism  but 
also  for  anointing  with  oil?  Nude  baptism  is  still 
practiced  when  converts  are  received  into  the  Greek 
church,  no  position  or  station  in  life  excusing  from  it, 
Catharine,  the  first  wife  of  Peter  the  Great  being 
baptized   in    this    primitive    christian    manner.102     As 

ioo.  The  women  claimed  the  right  to  baptize  their  own  sex.  But  the  bishops 
and  presbyters  did  not  care  to  be  released  from  the  pleasant  duty  of  baptizing 
the  female  converts.     Waite.—Jfist.  of  Christian  Religion  to  A.  D.  200,  p.  23. 

The  Constitution  of  the  Church  of  Alexandria,  which  is  thought  to  have  been 
established  about  the  year  200,  required  the  applicant  for  baptism  to  be  divested 
of  clothing,  and  after  the  ordinance  had  been  administered,  to  be  anointed  with 
oil— /bid,  p.  384-5. 

The  converts  were  first  exorcised  of  the  evil  spirits  that  were  supposed  to  in- 
habit them;  then,  after  undressing  and  being  baptized,  they  were  anointed  with 
oil. — Bunsen's  Christianity  0/ Mankind,  Vol.  VII,  p.  386-393;  3d  Vol.  Analecta. 

Women  were  baptized  quite  naked  in  the  presence  of  these  men.—  Philosophical 
Dictionary. 

Some  learned  men  have  enacted  that  in  primitive  churches  the  persons  to  be 
baptized,  of  whatever  age  or  sex,  should  be  quite  naked.  Pike.— History  0/ 
Crime  iu  England.  See  Joseph  Vicecomes.— De  Ritibus  Baptismi.  Varrius.— 
Thesibus  de  Baptisme. 

101.  Undisguised  sensuality  reached  a  point  we  can  scarcely  conceive. 
Women  were  sometimes  brought  naked  upon  the  stage.  By  a  curious  associa- 
tion of  ideas  the  theater  was  still  intimately  connected  with  religious  observance. 
Rationalism  in  Europe,  2-288. 

102.  Catharine,  the  first  wife  of  Peter  the  Great,  was  received  into  the  Greek 
Church  by  a  rite  nearly  approaching  the  primitive  customs  of  the  Christian 
Church.    New  converts  to  that  church  are  plunged  three  times  naked  in  a  river 


2l6  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

late  as  the  seventeenth  century  a  work  upon  the  "Seven 
Sacraments"  set  certain  days  in  which  female  penitents 
were  to  appear  entirely  unclothed  before  the  confessor 
in  order  that  he  might  discipline  them  on  account  of 
their  sins. 

or  into  a  large  tub  of  cold  water.  Whatever  is  the  condition,  age  or  sex  of  the 
convert,  this  indecent  ceremony  is  never  dispensed  with.  The  effrontery  of  a 
pope  (priests  of  the  Greek  Church  are  thus  called),  sets  at  defiance  all  the  rea- 
sons which  decency  and  modesty  never  cease  to  use  against  the  absurdity  and 
impudence  of  this  shameful  ceremony.  Count  Segur.—  Woman's  Condition  and 
Influence  in  Society, 


CHAPTER    V. 

WITCHCRAFT. 

Although  toward  the  beginning  of  the  IV.  century, 
people  began  to  speak  of  the  nocturnal  meeting  of 
witches  and  sorcerers,  under  the  name  of  "Assembly 
of  Diana,"  or  "Herodia,"  it  was  not  until  canon  or 
church  law,  had  become  quite  engrafted  upon  the 
civil  law,  that  the  full  persecution  for  witchcraft  arose. 
A  witch  was  held  to  be  a  woman  who  had  deliberately 
sold  herself  to  the  evil  one;  who  delighted  in  injuring 
others,  and  who,  for  the  purpose  of  enhancing  the 
enormity  of  her  evil  acts,  choose  the  Sabbath  day  for 
the  performance  of  her  most  impious  rites,  and  to 
whom  all  black  animals  had  special  relationship;  the 
black  cat  in  many  countries  being  held  as  her  princi- 
pal familiar.  "To  go  to  the  Sabbath"  signified  tak- 
ing part  in  witch  orgies.  The  possession  of  a  pet  of 
any  kind  at  this  period  was  dangerous  to  woman.  One 
who  had  tamed  a  frog,  was  condemned  to  be  burned 
in  consequence,  the  harmless  amphibian  being  looked 
upon  as  a  familiar  of  Satan.  The  devil  ever  being 
depicted  in  sermon  or  story  as  black,  all  black  animals 
by  an  easy  transition  of  ideas,  became  associated  with 
evil  and  witches.1  Although  I  have  referred  to  witch- 
craft as  having  taken  on  a  new  phase  soon  after  the 
confirmation  of  celibacy  as  a  dogma  of  the  church    by 

i.  Black  was  hated  as  the  colors  of  the  devil.    In  the  same  manner  red  was 
hated  in  Egypt  as  tht  color  of  Typhon. 

317 


2l8  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

the  Lateran  Council  of  1215,  it  yet  requires  a  chapter 
by  itself,  in  order  to  show  to  what  proportions  this 
form  of  heresy  arose,  and  the  method  of  the  church  in 
its  treatment.  This  period  was  the  age  of  supreme 
despair  for  woman,2  death  by  fire  being  the  common 
form  of  witch  punishment.  Black  cats  were  frequently 
burned  with  a  witch  at  the  stake;3  during  the  reign 
of  Louis  XV.  of  France,  sacks  of  condemned  cats 
were  burned  upon  the  public  square  devoted  to  witch 
torture.  Cats  and  witches  are  found  depicted  together 
in  a  curious  cut  on  the  title  page  of  a  book  printed  in 
1621.  The  proverbial  'nine  lives'  of  a  cat  were  asso- 
ciated in  the  minds  of  people  with  the  universally 
believed  possible  metamorphosis  of  a  witch  into  a 
cat.4  So  firmly  did  the  diabolical  nature  of  the  black 
cat  impress  itself  upon  the  people,  that  its  effects  are 
felt  in  business  to  this  day,  the  skin  of  black  cats 
being  less  prized  and  of  less  value  in  the  fur 
market  than  those  of  other  colors.  A  curious  exemplifi- 
cation of  this  inherited  belief  is  found  in  Great 
Britain.  An  English  taxidermist  who  exports  thou- 
sands of  mounted  kittens  each  year  to  the  United 
States  and  other  countries,  finds  the  prejudice  against 
black  cats  still  so  great  that  he  will  not  purchase  kit- 
tens of  this  obnoxious  color.5     In  the  minds  of  many 

2.  At  what  date  then  did  the  witch  appear?  In  the  age  of  despair,  of  that  deep 
despair  which  the  guilt  of  the  church  engendered.  Unfalteringly  I  say,  the 
witch  is  a  crime  of  their  own  making. — Michelet. 

3.  "It  is  not  a  little  remarkable,  though  perfectly  natural,  that  the  introduction 
of  the  cat  gave  a  new  impulse  to  tales  and  fears  of  ghosts  and  enchantments. 
The  sly,  creeping,  nocturnal  grimalkin  took  rank  at  once  with  owls  and  bats,  and 
soon  surpassed  them  both  as  an  exponent  of  all  that  is  weird  and  supernatural. 
Entirely  new  conceptions  of  witchcraft  were  gained  for  the  world  when  the 
black  cat  appeared  upon  the  scene  with  her  swollen  tail,  glistening  eyes  and  un- 
earthly yell."—  Ex. 

4.  Steevens  says  it  was  permitted  to  a  witch  to  take  on  a  cattes  body  nine 
times.— Brand  3,  80-90. 

5.  Mr.  E.  F.  Spicer.  a  taxidermist  of  Birmingham,  whose  great  specialty  is 


WITCHCRAFT  210 

people,  black  seems  ineradicably  connected  with 
sorcery. 

In  the  "Folk  Lore  of  Cats"  it  is  stated  that  as  recently 
as  1867  a  woman  was  publicly  accused  of  witchcraft  in 
the  state  of  Pennsylvania  on  account  of  her  administer- 
ing three  drops  of  a  black  cat's  blood  to  a  child  as  a 
remedy  for  the  croup.  She  admitted  the  fact  but 
denied  that  witchcraft  had  anything  to  do  with  it, 
and  twenty  witnesses  were  called  to  prove  its  success 
as  a  remedy.  From  an  early  period  the  belief  in 
metamorphosis  by  means  of  magical  power  was  com- 
mon throughout  Christendom.  St.  Augustine  relates6 
that  "hostess  or  innkeepers  sometimes  put  confections 
into  a  kind  of  cheese  made  by  them,  and  travelers 
eating  thereof,  were  presently  metamorphosed  into 
laboring  beasts,  as  horses,  asses  or  oxen."  It  was 
also  believed  that  the  power  of  changing  into  various 
animals  was  possessed  by  witches  themselves.7  At 
the  present  day  under  certain  forms  of  insanity  persons 
imagine  themselves  to  be  animals,  birds,  and  even 
inanimate  things,  as  glass  ;  but  usually  those  halluci- 
nations occur  in  isolated  instances.  But  among  the 
strange  epidemics  which  have  at  various  times  affected 
Christendom,  none  is  more  singular  than  that  Lycan- 
thropia,  or  wolf  madness,  which  attacked  such  multi- 

the  artistic  preparation  of  kittens  for  sale,  will  not  purchase  black  ones,  as  he 
finds  the  superstition  against  black  cats  interferes  with  their  sale.— "Pall  Mall 
Gazette,"  Nov.  13,  1886.  But  the  United  States,  less  superstitious,  has  recently 
witnessed  the  formation  of  a  "Consolidated  Cat  Company"  upon  Puget  Sound 
for  the  special  propagation  of  black  cats  to  be  raised  for  their  fur. 

6.  City  of  God,  Lib.  XVIII.  Charles  F.  Lummis,  in  a  recent  work,  Some 
Strange  Corners  of  Our  Country,  the  Wonderland  of  the  Southwest,  refers  to  the 
power  of  the  shamens  to  turn  themselves  at  will  into  any  animal  shape,  as  a 
wolf,  bear  or  dog. 

7.  Italian  women  usually  became  cats.  The  Witch  Hammer  mentioned  a 
belief  in  Lycanthropy  and  Metamorphosis.  It  gave  the  story  of  a  countryman 
who  was  assaulted  by  three  cats.  He  wounded  them,  after  which  three  infamous 
witches  were  found  wounded  and  bleeding. 


220  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

tudes  of  inhabitants  of  the  Jura  in  1600,  as  to  become 
a  source  of  great  public  danger.  The  affected  persons 
walked  upon  their  feet  and  hands  until  their  palms 
became  hard  and  horny.  They  howled  like  wolves,  and 
as  wolves  do  they  hunted  in  packs,  murdering  and 
devouring  many  children,  nor  could  the  most  severe 
punishment  put  an  end  to  this  general  madness.  Six 
hundred  persons  were  executed  upon  their  own  con- 
fessions, which  included  admissions  of  compact  with 
the  devil,  attendance  upon  the  Sabbath  and  cannibal 
feasting  upon  a  mountain,  the  devil  having  used  his 
power  for  their  transmutation  into  wolves.8  Witches 
Were  believed  to  ride  through  the  air  upon  animals  or 
bits  of  wood.  The  fact  of  their  possession  of  such 
powers  is  asserted  by  many  writers,  the  usual  method 
of  transportation  being  a  goat,  night  crow  or  enchanted 
staff.9     The  rhyming  Mother  Goose  question  : 

"Old  woman,  old  woman,  oh  whither,  oh  whither  so 
high?" 

And  its  rhyming  answer: 

"To  sweep  the  cobwebs  from  the  sky, 
And    I'll    be  back  by   and   by," 
doubtless   owes   its  origin  to  the  witchcraft  period. 

A  song  said  to  be  in  use  during  witch  dances  ran: 

"Har,  Har,  Diabole,  Diabole;  Sali  hue, 

Sali  illuc;  Lude  hie,  Lude  illic; 

Sabaoth,  Sabaoth." 

Although  the    confirmation    by   the    church    in    the 

8.  For  a  full  account  of  this  madness,  and  other  forms  that  sometimes  attacked 
whole  communities  during  the  middle  Christian  ages,  see  "Hecker.—  Epidemics 
of  the  Middle  Ages,'" 

9.  The  conventicle  of  witches  was  said  to  be  held  on  Mt.  Atlas,  •'to  which  they 
rode  upon  a  goat,  a  night  crow,  or  an  enchanted  staff,  or  bestriding  a  broom  staff. 
Sundry  speeches  belonged  to  these  witches,  the  words  whereof  were  neither 
Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  French,  Spanish,  Italian,  nor  indeed  deriving  their 
Etymology  from  any  known  language." 


WITCHCRAFT  221 

XIII.  century  of  the  supreme  holiness  ot  celibacy,  in- 
augurated a  new  era  of  persecution  for  witchcraft,  a 
belief  in  its  existence  had  from  the  earliest  times  been 
a  doctrine  of  the  church,  Augustine,  as  shown,  giving 
the  weight  of  his  authority  in  favor.  But  to  the 
Christian  Emperor  Charlemagne,  in  the  eight  century, 
the  first  use  of  torture  in  accusation  of  witchcraft  is 
due.  This  great  emperor  while  defying  the  power  of 
the  pope,  over  whom  he  even  claimed  jurisdiction, 
was  himself  a  religious  autocrat  whose  severity  ex- 
ceeded even  that  of  the  papal  throne.  Torture  was 
rapidly  adopted  over  Europe,  and  soon  became  gen- 
eral in  the  church;  the  council  of  Salsburg,  799,  pub- 
licly ordering  its  use  in  witch  trials. 

A  new  era  of  persecution  and  increased  priestly 
power  dates  to  the  reign  of  Charlemagne,  who  although 
holding  himself  superior  to  the  pope,  as  regarded  in- 
dependent action,  greatly  enlarged  the  dominion  of 
the  church  and  power  of  the  priesthood.  He  forced 
Christianity  upon  the  Saxons  at  immense  sacrifice  of 
life,  added  to  the  wealth  and  power  of  the  clergy  by 
tithe  lands,  recognized  their  judicial  and  canonical 
authority,  made  marriage  illegal  without  priestly  sanc- 
tion and  still  further  degraded  womanhood  through  his 
own  polygamy.  Although  himself  of  such  wanton  life, 
he  yet  caused  a  woman  of  the  town  to  be  dragged  naked 
through  the  city  streets,  subject  to  all  the  cruel  tor- 
tures of  an  accompanying  mob. 

In  the  ninth  century  the  power  of  the  pope  was 
again  greatly  increased.  Up  to  this  period  he  had 
been  elected  by  the  clergy  and  people  of  Rome,  and 
the  approbation  of  the  emperor  was  necessary  to  con- 
firm it.  But  Charles  the  Bald,  875,  relinquished  all 
right  of  jurisdiction  over  Rome,  and  thereafter  the 
Roman  Pontiff  became  an    acknowledged  if  not  some- 


222  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

times  a  supreme  power  in  the  appointment  of  temporal 
princes.  The  power  of  bishops,  clergy,  and  cardi- 
nals diminished  as  that  of  the  pope  increased. 

Notwithstanding  her  claims  of  power  through  St. 
Peter,  it  has  been  by  gradual  steps  that  Rome  has  de- 
cided upon  her  policy  and  established  her  dogmas.  It  is 
but  little  over  four  decades,  at  the  Ecumenical  of 
1849,  that  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception 
of  the  Virgin  Mary,  was  first  authoritatively  promul- 
gated, although  her  worship  had  long  existed,  being 
traceable  to  the  Egyptian  doctrine  of  the  trinity,  with 
the  substitution  of  Mary  in  place  of  Isis.  It  was  not 
until  1085  that  Hildebrand,  Pope  Gregory  VII,  de- 
clared matrimony  a  sacrament  of  the  church;  and  not 
until  1415,  at  the  Council  of  Trent,  that  extreme 
unction  was  instituted  and  denned  as  a  sacrament. 
Each  of  these  dogmas  threw  more  power  into  the 
hands  of  the  church,  and  greater  wealth  into  her 
coffers.  Thus  we  see  the  degeneration  of  Christianity 
has  had  its  epochs.  One  occurred  when  the  Council 
of  Nice  allowed  chance  to  dictate  which  should  be 
considered  the  canonical  books  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, accepting  some  theretofore  regarded  as  of  doubt- 
ful authenticity  and  rejecting  others  that  had  been 
universally  conceded  genuine.10  Another  epoch  of  de- 
generation occurs  when  the  State  in  person  of  the 
great  emperor  Charlemagne  added  to  the  power  of  the 
Church  by  the  establishment  of  torture,  whose  ex- 
tremest  use  fell  upon  that  portion  of  humanity  looked 
upon  as  the  direct  embodiment  of  evil.  The  peculiar 
character  attributed  to  woman   by  the   church,    led    to 

10.  St.  Gregory,  of  Nyassa,  a  canonized  saint,  the  only  theologian  to  whom  the 
church  (except  St.  John)  has  ever  allowed  the  title  of  "The  Divine,"  was  a  mem- 
ber of  that  council,  aiding  in  the  preparation  of  the  Nicene  Creed.  It  is  a  sig- 
nificant fact  that  a  great  number  of  public  women,  "an  immense  number,"  con- 
gregated at  Nice  during  the  sessions  of  this  council. 


WITCHCRAFT  223 

the  adoption  of  torture  as  a  necessary  method  of  forc- 
ing her  to  speak  the  truth.  The  testimony  of  two, 
and  in  some  countries,  three  women  being  held  as  only 
equal  to  that  of  one  man.  At  first,  young  children  and 
women  expecting  motherhood,  were  exempted,  but 
afterwards  neither  age  or  condition  freed  from  accusa- 
tion and  torture,  and  women  even  in  the  pangs  of 
maternity  were  burned  at  the  stake,11  Christianity  in 
this  respect  showing  much  more  barbarity  than  pagan 
nations.  In  pagan  Rome  the  expectant  mother  was 
held  sacred;  to  vex  or  disturb  her  mind  was  punish- 
able, to  strike  her  was  death.  She  even  possessed 
a  right  pertaining  to  the  Vestal  Virgins;  if  meeting 
a  condemned  criminal  on  his  way  to  execution,  her 
word  sufficed  for  his  pardon.  It  scarcely  seems  possi- 
ble, yet  in  some  christian  countries  the  most  promi- 
nent class  subjected  to  the  torture,  were  women 
expecting  motherhood.  Christianity  became  the  relig- 
ion of  Iceland  A.  D.,  1000,  and  by  the  earliest 
extant  law,  the  "Gragas,"  dating  to  1119,  we  find  that 
while  torture  was  prescribed  in  but  few  instances  yet 
the  class  principally  subjected  to  it,  were  women 
about  to  become  mothers.  But  generally  throughout 
Europe,  until  about  the  XIV.  century,  when  priestly 
celibacy  had  become  firmly  established  and  the  In- 
quisition connected  with  the  state,  a  class  consisting 
of  nobles,  doctors  of  the  law,  pregnant  women,  and 
children  under  fourteen,  were  exempt  from  torture  ex- 
cept in  case  of  high  treason  and  a  few  other  offenses. 
But  at  a  later  period  when  these  institutions  had 
greatly  increased  the  irresponsible  power  of  the  church, 

11.  In  Guernsey  a  mother  and  her  two  daughters  were  brought  to  the  stake; 
one  of  the  latter,  a  married  woman  with  child,  was  delivered  in  the  midst  of  her 
torments,  and  the  infant,  just  rescued,  was  tossed  back  into  the  flames  by  a  priest 
with  the  cry,  "One  heretic  the  less." 


224  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

we  find  neither  sex,  condition    nor   age,  free  from    its 
infliction,  both  state  and  church  uniting  in  its  use. 

In  Venitian  Folk  Lore,  it  is  stated  that  Satan  once 
became  furious  with  the  Lord  because  paradise  con- 
tained more  souls  than  hell,  and  he  determined  by 
fine  promises  to  seduce  human  beings  to  his  worship 
and  thus  fill  his  kingdom.  He  decided  to  always 
tempt  women  instead  of  men,  because  through  ambi- 
tion or  a  desire  for  revenge,  they  yield  more  easily. 
This  legend  recalls  the  biblical  story  of  Satan  taunt- 
ing the  Lord  with  the  selfish  nature  of  Job's  goodness, 
and  receiving  from  God  the  permission  to  try  him. 
Witchcraft  was  regarded  as  a  sin  almost  confined  to 
women.  The  Witch  Hammer  declared  the  very  word 
femina  meant  one  wanting  in  faith.  A  wizard  was 
rare;  one  writer  declaring  that  to  every  hundred 
witches  but  one  wizard  was  found.  In  time  of  Louis 
XV.  this  difference  was  greatly  increased ;  "To  one 
wizard  10,000  witches;"  another  writer  asserted  there 
were  100,000  witches  in  France  alone.  The  great  in- 
quisitor Sprenger,  author  of  the  "Witch  Hammer" 
and  through  whose  instrumentality  many  countries 
were  filled  with  victims,  largely  promoted  this  belief. 
"Heresy  of  witches,  not  of  wizards12  must  we  call  it, 
for  these  latter  are  of  very  small  account."  No  class 
or  condition  of  women  escaped  him;  we  read  of  young 
children,  old  people,  infants,  witches  of  fifteen  years, 
and  two  "infernally  beautiful"  of  seventeen  years. 
Although  the  ordeal  of  the  red  hot  iron  fell  into  dis- 
use in  the  secular  courts  early  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury,   (1329), 13   ecclesiasticism  preserved   it   in  case  of 

12.  "Old  writers  declared  that  women  have  been  more  addicted  to  these 
devilish  arts  than  men,  was  manifest  by  'many  grave  authors,'  among  whom 
Diodorus,  Sindas,  P  liny  and  St.  Augustine  were  mentioned.  Quintillian  declared 
theft  more  prevalent  among  men,  but  witchcraft  especially  a  sin  of  women." 

13,  Lea. — Superstition  and  Force, 


WITCHCRAFT  225 

women  accused  of  witchcraft  for  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  longer.14  One  of  the  peculiarities  of 
witchcraft  accusations,  was  that  protestations  of  inno- 
cence, and  a  submission  to  ordeals  such  as  had  always 
vindicated  those  taking  part  in  them  if  passing 
through  unharmed,  did  not  clear  a  woman  charged 
with  witchcraft,  who  was  then  accused  with  having 
received  direct  help  from  Satan.  The  maxim  of 
secular  law  that  the  torture  which  did  not  produce  con- 
fession entitled  the  accused  to  full  acquittal  was  not 
in  force  under  ecclesiastical  indictments,  and  the  per- 
son accused  of  witchcraft  was  always  liable  to  be  tried 
again  for  the  same  crime.  Every  safeguard  of  law 
was  violated  in  case  of  woman,  even  Magna  Charta 
forbidding  appeal  to  her  except  in  case  of  her  hus- 
band. 

Before  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  no  capital 
punishment  existed,  in  the  modern  acceptation  of  the 
term,  except  for  witchcraft.  But  pagans  unlike  chris- 
tians, did  not  look  upon  women  as  more  given  to  this 
practice  than  men;  witches  and  wizards  were  alike 
stoned  to  death.  But  as  soon  as  a  system  of  religion 
was  adopted  which  taught  the  greater  sinfulness  of 
women,  over  whom  authority  had  been  given  to  man 
by  God  himself,  the   saying   arose  "one  wizard  to  10,- 

14.  Certain  forms  of  ordeal,  such  as  the  ordinary  ones  of  fire  and  water,  seem 
to  have  owed  their  origin  to  the  trials  passed  by  the  candidate  for  admission 
into  the  ancient  mysteries  as  Lea,  has  also  conjectured.  During  the  mysteries 
of  Isis,  the  candidate  was  compelled  to  descend  into  dark  dungeons  of  unknown 
depth,  to  cross  bars  of  red-hot  iron,  to  plunge  into  a  rapid  stream  at  seeming 
hazard  of  life,  to  hang  suspended  in  mid-air;  while  the  entrance  into  other  mys- 
teries confronted  the  candidate  with  howling  wild  beasts  and  frightful  serpents. 
All  who  passed  the  ancient  ordeals  in  safety,  were  regarded  as  holy  and  accepta- 
ble to  the  Deity,  but  not  so  under  Christian  ordeal,  its  intention  being  conviction 
of  the  accused.  Those  who  proved  their  innocence  by  carrying  red-hot  iron  un- 
injured for  three  paces  and  the  court  was  thus  forced  to  acquit,  or  who  passed 
through  other  forms  of  torture  without  confession  were  still  regarded  with  sus- 
picion as  having  been  aided  by  Satan,  and  the  sparing  of  their  lives  was  to  the 
scandal  of  the  faithful. 


226  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

ooo  witches."  and  the  persecution  for  witchcraft  be- 
came chiefly  directed  against  women.  The  church  de- 
graded woman  by  destroying  her  self-respect,  and 
teaching  her  to  feel  consciousness  of  guilt  in  the  very 
fact  of  her  existence.15  The  extreme  wickedness  of 
woman,  taught  as  a  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  church, 
created  the  belief  that  she  was  desirous  of  destroy- 
ing all  religion,  witchcraft  being  regarded  as  her 
strongest  weapon,16  therefore  no  punishment  for  it  was 
thought  too  severe.  The  teaching  of  the  church,  as 
to  the  creation  of  women  and  the  origin  of  evil,  em- 
bodied the  ordinary  belief  of  the  christian  peoples, 
and  that  woman  rather  than  man  practiced  this  sin, 
was  attributed  by  the  church  to  her  original  sinful 
nature,  which  led  her  to  disobey  God's  first  command 
in  Eden.17 

Although  witchcraft  was  treated  as  a  crime  against 
the  state,  it  was  regarded  as  a  greater  sin  against 
heaven,  the  bible  having  set  its  seal  of  disapproval  in 
the  injunction  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live." 
The  church  therefore  claimed  its  control.  When  com- 
ing under  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  witchcraft  was 
much  more  strenuously  dealt  with  than  when  it  fell 
under  lay  tribunals.  It  soon  proved  a  great  source  of 
emolument  to  the  church,  which  grew  enormously  rich 

15.  Woman  was  represented  as  the  door  of  hell,  as  the  mother  of  all  human 
ill.  She  should  be  ashamed  at  the  very  thought  she  is  a  woman.  She  should 
live  in  continual  penance  on  account  of  the  curses  she  has  brought  upon  the 
world.  She  should  be  ashamed  of  her  dress,  for  it  is  the  memorial  of  her  fall. 
She  should  be  especially  ashamed  of  her  beauty,  for  it  is  the  most  potent 
instrument  of  the  demon. — Hist.   European  Morals,  Vol.  2,  p.  358. 

16.  Witchcraft  was  supposed  to  have  power  of  subverting  religion.—  Mon- 
tesquieu. 

17.  The  question  why  the  immense  majority  of  those  who  were  accused  should 
be  women,  early  attracted  attention;  it  was  answered  by  the  inherent  wickedness 
of  the  sex,  which  had  its  influence  in  pre-disposing  men  to  believe  in  witches, 
and  also  in  producing  the  extreme  callousness  with  which  the  sufferings  of  the 
victims  were  contemplated. — Rationalism  in  Europe  I,  88. 


WITCHCRAFT  227 

by  its  confiscation  to  its  own  use  of  all  property  of 
the  condemned.  Sprenger,  whose  work  (The  Witch 
Hammer),  was  devoted  to  methods  of  dealing  with 
this  sin,  was  printed  in  size  convenient  for  carrying 
in  the  pocket.18  It  based  its  authority  upon  the  bible, 
twenty-three  pages  being  devoted  to  proving  that 
women  were  especially  addicted  to  sorcery.  This  work 
was  sanctioned  by  the  pope,  but  after  the  reformation 
became  equally  authoritative  in  protestant  as  in  cath- 
olic countries,  not  losing  its  power  for  evil  until  the 
XVIII.  century.  A  body  of  men  known  as  "Traveling 
Witch  Inquisitors,"  of  whom  Sprenger  was  chief,  jour- 
neyed from  country  to  country  throughout  Christendom, 
in  search  of  victims  for  torture  and  death.  Their 
entrance  into  a  country  or  city  was  regarded  with 
more  fear  than  famine  or  pestilence,  especially  by 
women,  against  whom  their  malignity  was  chiefly 
directed,  Sprenger,  the  great  authority,  declaring  that 
her  name  signified  evil ;  "the  very  word  fetnina,  (woman), 
meaning  one  wanting  in  faith,  for  fe  means  faith,  and 
minus  less.19"  The  reformation  caused  no  diminution  in 
its  use,  the  protestant  clergy  equally  with  the  catholic 
constantly  appealing  to  its  pages.  Still  another  class 
known  as  "Witch  Finders,"  or  "Witch  Persecutors"  con. 
fined  their  work  to  their  own  neighborhoods.  Of  these, 
Cardan,  a  famous  Italian  physician,  said: 

"In  order  to  obtain  forfeit  property,  the  same  per- 
sons act  as  accusers  and  judges,  and  invent  a  thousand 
stories  as  proof."20     The  love  of  power,  and  the  love 

18.  18  mo.    An  unusually  small  size  for  that  period. 

19.  ( Witch  Hammer.) 

20.  The  Court  of  Rome  was  fully  apprized  that  power  cannot  be  maintained 
without  property,  and  thereupon  its  attention  began  very  early  to  be  riveted  upon 
every  method  that  promised  pecuniary  advantage.  All  the  wealth  of  Christen- 
dom was  gradually  drawn  by  a  thousand  channels  into  the  coffers  of  the  Holy 
See.    Blackstone.— Commentaries  4,  106.     "The  church  forfeited  the  wizard's 


228  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

of  money  formed  a  most  hideous  combination  for  evil 
in  the  church ;  not  a  christian  country  but  was  full  of 
the  horrors  of  witch  persecutions  and  violent  deaths. 
During  the  reign  of  Francis  I.  more  than  100,000 
witches  were  put  to  death,  mostly  by  burning,  in 
France  alone.  Christ  was  invoked  as  authority,  the 
square  devoted  to  Auto  da  F6,  being  known  as,  "The 
Burning  Place  of  the  Cross." 

The  Parliament  of  Toulouse  burned  400  witches  at 
one  time.  Four  hundred  women  at  one  hour  on  the 
public  square,  dying  the  horrid  death  of  fire  for  a 
crime  which  never  existed  save  in  the  imagination  of 
those  persecutors  and  which  grew  in  their  imagination 
from  a  false  belief  in  woman's  extraordinary  wicked- 
ness, based  upon  a  false  theory  as  to  original  sin. 
Remy,  judge  of  Nancy,  acknowledged  to  having  burnt 
eight  hundred  in  sixteen  years  ;  at  the  rate  of  half  a 
hundred  a  year.  Many  women  were  driven  to  suicide 
in  fear  of  the  torture  in  store  for  them.  In  1595  six- 
teen of  those  accused  by  Remy,  destroyed  themselves 
rather  than  fall  into  his  terrible  hands.  Six  hundred 
were  burnt  in  one  small  bishopric  in  one  year;  nine 
hundred  during  the  same  period  in  another.  Seven 
thousand  lost  their  lives  in  Treves;  a  thousand  in  the 
province  of  Como,  in  Italy,  in  a  single  year;  five  hun- 
dred were  executed  at  Geneva,  in  a  single  month. 

While  written  history  does  not  fail  to  give  abund- 
ant record  in  regard  to  the  number  of  such  victims  of 
the  church,  largely  women  whose  lives  were  forfeited 
by  accusation  of  witchcraft,  hundreds  at  one  time  dy- 
ing  agonizingly   by  fire,  a  new  and  weird   evidence  as 

property  to  the  judge  and  the  prosecutor.  Wherever  the  church  law  was  en- 
forced, the  trials  for  witchcraft  waxed  numerous  and  brought  much  wealth  to  the 
clergy.  Wherever  the  lay  tribunal  claimed  the  management  of  those  trials,  they 
grew  scarce  and  disappeared." 


WITCHCRAFT  220, 

to  the  innumerable  multitude  of  these  martyrs  was  of 
late  most  unexpectedly  brought  to  light  in  Spain. 
During  a  course  of  leveling  and  excavations  for  city 
improvements  in  Madrid,  recently,  the  workmen  came 
upon  the  Quemadero  de  la  Cruz.21  The  cutting  of  a  new 
road  through  that  part  of  the  city  laid  bare  like  geo- 
logical strata,  long  black  layers  super-imposed  one 
above  the  other  at  distances  of  one  or  two  feet,  in  the 
sandstone  and  clay.  Some  of  these  layers  extended 
150  feet  in  a  horizontal  direction,  and  were  at  first 
supposed  to  be  the  actual  discovery  of  new  geological 
strata,  which  they  closely  resembled.  They  proved  to 
be  the  remains  of  inquisitorial  burnings,  where  thou- 
sands of  human  beings  of  all  ages  had  perished  by  the 
torture  of  fire.22  The  layers  consisted  of  coal  coagu- 
lated with  human  fat,  bones,  the  remains  of  singed 
hair,  and  the  shreds  of  burnt  garments  This  dis- 
covery created  great  excitement,  people  visiting  the 
spot  by  thousands  to  satisfy  themselves  of  the  fact, 
and  to  carry  away  some  memento  of  that  dark  age  of 
christian  cruelty,  a  cruelty  largely  exercised  against 
the  most  helpless  and  innocent,  a  cruelty  having  no 
parallel  in  the  annals  of  paganism.  Imagination  fails 
to  conceive  the  condensed  torture  this  spot  of  earth 
knew  under  the  watchword  of  "Christ  and  His  Cross"  ; 
and  that  was  but  one  of  the  hundreds,  nay,  thousands 
of  similar  "Burning  Places  of  the  Cross,"  with  which 
every  christian  country,  city,  and  town  was  provided 
for  many  hundreds  of  years.  A  most  diabolical  cus- 
tom of  the  church  made  these  burnings  a  holiday 
spectacle.     People   thus   grew  to   look  unmoved  upon 

21.  Burning  Place  of  the  Cross. 

22.  A  MS.  upholding  the  burning  of  witches  as  heretics,  written  in  1450  by  the 
Dominican  Brother  Hieronytnes  Visconti,  of  Milan,  is  among  the  treasures  of  the 
White  Library,  recently  presented  to  Cornell  University, 


23O  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  most  atrocious  tortures,  and  excited  crowds  hung 
about  witch  burnings,  eagerly  listening  as  the  priests 
exhorted  to  confession,  or  tormented  the  dying  victims 
with  pictures  of  an  unending  fire  soon  to  be  their  fate. 
An  accusation  of  witchcraft  struck  all  relatives  of 
the  accused  with  terror,  destroying  the  ordinary  vir- 
tues of  humanity  in  the  hearts  of  nearest  friends.  As 
it  was  maintained  that  devils  possessed  more  than  one 
in  a  family,  each  member  sought  safety  by  aiding  the 
church  in  accumulating  proof  against  the  accused,  in 
hopes  thereby  to  escape  similar  charge.  It  is  impos- 
sible for  us  at  the  present  day  to  conceive  the  awful 
horror  falling  upon  a  family  into  which  an  accusation 
of  witchcraft  had  come.  Not  alone  the  shame  and  dis- 
grace of  such  a  charge;  the  terrors  of  a  violent  death 
under  the  most  painful  form;  the  sudden  hurling  of 
the  family  from  ease  and  affluence  to  the  most  abject 
poverty  ;  but  above  all  the  belief  that  unending  tor- 
ment by  fire  pursued  the  lost  soul  throughout  eternity, 
made  a  combination  of  terrors  appalling  to  the  stout- 
est heart.  A  Scotch  woman  convicted  as  a  witch  and 
sentenced  to  be  burned  alive  could  not  be  persuaded 
by  either  priest  or  sheriff  to  admit  her  guilt.  Suffering 
the  intensest  agonies  of  thirst  during  her  torture  she 
espied  her  only  son  in  the  surrounding  crowd.  Implor- 
ing him  in  the  name  of  her  love  for  him  she  begged 
as  her  last  request,  that  he  should  bring  her  a  drink. 
He  shook  his  head,  not  speaking;  her  fortitude  her 
love,  his  own  most  certain  conviction  of  her  innocence 
not  touching  him;  when  she  cried  again,  "Oh,  my 
dear  son,  help  me  any  drink,  be  it  never  so  little,  for 
I  am  most  extremely  drie,  oh  drie,  drie. "  His  answer 
to  her  agonizing  entreaties  could  not  be  credited  were 
it  not  a  subject  of   history,  and   the   date   so   recent. 


WITCHCRAFT  23 I 

"By  no  means  dear  mother  will  I  do  you  the  wrong, 
for  the  drier  you  are  no  doubt  you  will  burn  the  bet- 
ter. "23  Under  Accadian  law  3,000  years  before  Chris- 
tianity, the  son  who  denied  his  father  was  sentenced 
to  a  simple  fine,  but  he  who  denied  his  mother  was  to 
be  banished  from  the  land  and  sea  ;2i  but  in  the  six- 
teenth century  of  the  christian  era,  we  find  a  son 
under  christian  laws  denying  his  mother  a  drink  of 
water  in  her  death  agony  by  fire. 

Erskine  says  : 

It  was  instituted  in  Scotland  1653,  "that  all  who  used 
witchcraft,  sorcery,  necromancy,  or  pretended  skill 
therein,  shall  be  punished  capitally;  upon  which  stat- 
ute numberless  innocent  persons  were  tried  and  burnt 
to  death,  upon  evidence  which,  in  place  of  affording 
reasonable  conviction  to  the  judge,  was  fraught  with 
absurdity  and  superstition.26 

Thirty  thousand  persons  accused  of  witchcraft  were 
burned  to  death  in  Germany  and  Italy  alone,  and 
although  neither  age  nor  sex  was  spared,  yet  women 
and  girls  were  the  chief  victims.  Uncommon  beauty 
was  as  dangerous  to  a  woman  as  the  possession  of 
great  wealth,  which  brought    frequent    accusations    in 

23.  It  shall  not  be  amiss  to  insert  among  these  what  I  have  heard  concerning 
a  witch  of  Scotland:  One  of  that  countrie  (as  by  report  there  are  too  many) 
being  for  no  goodness  of  the  judges  of  Assize,  arrayed,  convicted  and  condemned 
to  be  burnt,  and  the  next  day,  according  to  her  judgment,  brought  and  tied  to  the 
stake,  the  reeds  and  fagots  placed  round  about  her,  and  the  executioner  ready  to 
give  fire  (for  by  no  persuasion  of  her  ghostly  fathers,  nor  importunities  of  the 
sheriff,  she  could  be  wrought  to  confess  anything)  she  now  at  the  last  cast  to 
take  her  farewell  of  the  world,  casting  her  eye  at  one  side  upon  her  only  sonne, 
and  callr  to  him,  desiring  him  verie  earnestly  as  his  last  dutie  to  her  to  bring  her 
any  water,  or  the  least  quantity  of  licuor  (be  it  never  so  small),  to  comfort  her, 
for  she  was  so  extremely  athirst,  at  which  he,  shaking  his  head,  said  nothing; 
she  still  importuned  him  in  these  words:  "Oh,  my  deere  sonne  helpe  me  to  any 
drinke,  be  it  never  so  little,  for  1  am  most  extremely  drie,  oh  drie,  drie;"  to  which 
the  young  fellow  answered,  "by  no  means,  deere  mother  will  I  do  you  that  wrong; 
for  the  drier  you  are  (no  doubt)  you  •willburne  the  better"     Hey  wood  e — History  of 

Women,  Lib.  8,  p.  406. 

24.  Lenormant.— Chaldean  Magic  and  Sorcery,  385. 

25.  Institutes  of  Scotland. 


232  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

order  that  the  church   might  seize  upon    the    witches 
property  for  its  own  use. 

Children  of  the  most  tender  years  did  not  escape 
accusation  and  death.  During  the  height  of  witch 
craft  persecution,  hundreds  of  little  ones  were  con- 
demned as  witches.  Little  girls  of  ten,  eight,  and 
seven  years  are  mentioned;  blind  girls,  infants28 
and  even  young  boys  were  among  the  numbers  who 
thus  perished.  Everywhere  the  most  helpless  classes 
were  the  victims. 

It  was  declared  that  witches  looked  no  person 
steadily  in  the  face,  but  allowed  their  eyes  to  wander 
from  side  to  side,  or  kept  them  fixed  upon  the  earth. 
To  this  assertion  that  a  witch  could  not  look  any  one 
in  the  face,  the  present  belief  of  a  connection  between 
guilt  and  a  downcast  look,  is  due;  although  the  church 
taught  that  a  woman  should  preserve  a  downward 
look  in  shame  for  the  sin  she  had  brought  into  the 
world,  and  to  this  day,  an  open,  confident  look  upon 
a  woman's  face  is  deprecated  as  evil.  Attendance 
upon  Sabbats27  and  control  of  the  weather  were 
among  the  accusations  brought  against  the  witch.  In 
Scotland  a  woman  accused  of  raising  a  storm  by  tak- 
ing off  her  stockings,  was  put  to  death.  Sprenger  tells 
of  a  Swiss  farmer  whose  little  daughter  startled  him 
by  saying  she  could  bring  rain,  immediately  raising 
a  storm.28 

26.  At  Bamburg,  Germany  ,an  original  record  of  twenty-nine  burnings  in  nine- 
teen months,  162  persons  in  all,  mentions  the  infant  daughter  of  Dr.  Schutz  as  a 
victim  of  the  twenty-eighth  burning.     Ha.uber.—Bzbtiotheca  Magica. 

27.  In  those  terrible  trials  presided  over  by  Pierre  de  Lancre,  it  was  asserted 
that  hundreds  of  girls  and  boys  flocked  to  the  indescribable  Sabbats  of 'Labourd' 
The  Venitians  record  the  story  of  a  little  girl  of  nine  years  who  raised  a  great 
tempest,  and  who  like  her  mother  was  a  witch.     Signor  Bernoni,—  Folk  Lore. 

28.  Some  very  strange  stories  of  such  power  at  the  present  time  have  become 
known  to  the  author,  one  from  the  lips  of  a  literary  gentleman  in  New  York  City, 
this  man  of  undoubted  veracity  declaring  that  he  had  seen  his  own  father  extend 


WITCHCRAFT  233 

Whatever  the  pretext  made  for  witchcraft  persecu- 
tion we  have  abundant  proof  that  the  so-called  "witch" 
was  among  the  most  profoundly  scientific  persons  of 
the  age.  The  church  having  forbidden  its  offices  and 
all  external  methods  of  knowledge  to  woman,  was  pro- 
foundly  stirred  with  indignation  at  her  having  through 
her  own  wisdom,  penetrated  into  some  of  the  most 
deeply  subtle  secrets  of  nature:  and  it  was  a  subject 
of  debate  during  the  middle  ages  if  learning  for  wo- 
man was  not  an  additional  capacity  for  evil,  as  owing 
to  her,  knowledge  had  first  been  introduced  in  the 
world.  In  penetrating  into  these  arcana,  wo- 
man trenched  upon  that  mysterious  hidden  knowledge 
of  the  church  which  it  regarded  as  among  its  most 
potential  methods  of  controlling  mankind.  Scholars 
have  invariably  attributed  magical  knowledge  and 
practices  to  the  church,  popes  and  prelates  of  every 
degree  having  been  thus  accused.  The  word  "magic" 
or  "wisdom"  simply  meaning  superior  science,  was  at- 
tributed in  the  highest  degree  to  King  Solomon,  who 
ruled  even  the  Elementals  by  means  of  his  magic  ring 
made  in  accord '  with  certain  natural  laws.  He  was 
said  to  have  drawn  his  power  directly  from  God. 
Magi  were  known  as  late  as  the  X.  century  of  this  era. 
Among  their  powers  were  casting  out  demons,  the 
fearless  use  of  poisons,  control  of  spirits  and  an  ac- 
quaintance with  many  natural  laws  unknown  to  the 
world  at  large.  During  the  present  century,  the  Abbe 
Constant  (Eliphas  Levi),  declared  the  Pentegram  to 
be  the  key  of  the  two  worlds,  and  if  rightly  under- 
stood, endowing  man  with  infinite  power.   The  empire 

his  hand  under  a  cloudless  sky  and  produce  rain.  A  physician  of  prominence  in 
a  western  city  asserts  that  a  most  destructive  cyclone,  known  to  the  Signal 
Service  Bureau  as  "The  Great  Cyclone,"  was  brought  about  by  means  of  magical 
formulae,  made  use  of  by  a  school  girl  in  a  spirit  of  ignorant  bravado. 


234  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

of  the  will  over  the  astral  light  is  symbolized  in  magic 
by  the  Pentegram,  the  growth  of  a  personal  will  be- 
ing the  most  important  end  to  be  attained  in  the  his- 
tory of  man's  evolution.  The  opposition  of  the  church 
to  this  growth  of  the  human  will  in  mankind,  has  ever 
been  the  most  marked  feature  in  its  history.  Under 
will,  man  decides  for  himself,  escaping  from  all  con- 
trol that  hinders  his  personal  development. 

It  is  only  an  innate  and  natural  tendency  of  the 
soul  to  go  beyond  its  body  to  find  material  with  which 
to  clothe  the  life  that  it  desires  to  give  expression  to. 
The  soul  can  and  must  be  trained  to  do  this  con- 
sciously. You  can  easily  see  that  this  power  possessed 
consciously  will  give  its  possessor  power  to  work 
magic. 

Ignorance  and  the  anathemas  of  the  church  against 
knowledge  to  be  gained  through  an  investigation  of 
the  more  abstruse  laws  of  nature,  have  invested  the 
word  "magic"  with  terror.  But  magic  simply  means 
knowledge  of  the  effect  of  certain  natural,  but  generally 
unknown  laws;  the  secret  operation  of  natural  causes, 
according  to  Bacon  and  other  philosophers ;  conse- 
quences resulting  from  control  of  the  invisible  powers 
of  nature,  such  as  are  shown  in  the  electrical  appliances 
of  the  day,  which  a  few  centuries  since  would  have 
been  termed  witchcraft.  Seeking  to  compel  the  aid 
of  spirits,  was  understood  as  magic  at  an  early  day. 
Lenormant  says  the  object  of  magic  in  Chaldea,  was  to 
conjure  the  spirits  giving  minute  description  of  the 
ancient  formula.  Scientific  knowledge  in  the  hands 
of  the  church  alone,  was  a  great  element  of  spiritual 
and  temporal  power,  aiding  it  in  more  fully  subduing 
the  human  will.  The  testimony  of  the  ages  entirely 
destroys  the  assertion  sometimes  made  that  witchcraft 
was  merely  a  species  of  hysteria.     Every  discovery  of 


WITCHCRAFT  235 

science  is  a  nearer  step  towards  knowledge  of  the  laws 
governing  "the  Accursed  Sciences,"  as  everything  con- 
nected with  psychic  power  in  possession  of  the  laity 
was  termed  by  the  church.  "Her  seven  evidences  for 
possession"  included  nearly  all  forms  of  mesmerism. 
All  modern  investigations  tend  to  prove  what  was 
called  witchcraft,  to  have  been  in  most  instances 
the  action  of  psychic  laws  not  yet  fully  understood. 
An  extremely  suggestive  article  appeared  in  the 
January  and  February  numbers  of  "The  Path"  1887, 
by  C.  H.  A.  Bjerregaard  entitled,  "The  Elementals 
and  the  Elementary  Spirits."  In  it  Mr.  Bjerregaard 
referred  to  the  Pacinian  Corpuscles,  the  discovery  of 
an  Italian  physician  in  1830  and  1840.     He  said: 

Pacini  found  in  all  the  sensible  nerves  of  the  ringers 
many  elliptical  whitish  corpuscles.  He  compared  them 
to  the  electrical  organs  of  the  torpedo  and  described 
them  as  animal  magneto-motors,  or  organs  of  animal 
magnetism,  and  so  did  Henle  and  Holliker,  two  Ger- 
man anatomists  who  have  studied  and  described  these 
corpuscles  very  minutely. 

In  the  human  body  they  are  found  in  great  numbers 
in  connection  with  the  nerves  of  the  hand,  also  in 
those  of  the  foot  *  *  *  The  ecstatic  dances  of  the  en- 
thusiasts and  the  not-sinking  of  somnambulists  in 
water,  or  their  ability  to  use  the  soles  of  their  feet  as 
organs  of  perception,  and  the  ancient  art  of  healing 
by  the  soles  of  the  feet — all  these  facts  explain  the 
mystery. 

They  are  found  sparingly  on  the  spinal  nerves,  and 
on  the  plexuses  of  the  sympathetic,  but  never  on  the 
nerves  of  motion  *  *  *  Anatomists  are  interested  in 
these  Pacinian  corpuscles  because  of  the  novel  aspect 
in  which  they  present  the  constituent  parts  of  the 
nerve-tube,  placed  in  the  heart  of  a  system  of  con- 
centric membranous  capsules  with  intervening  fluid, 
and  divested  of  that  layer  which  they  (the  anatomists) 


236  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

regard  as  an  isolator  and  protector  of  the  more  poten- 
tial central  axis  within. 

This  apparatus — almost  formed  like  a  voltaic  pile, 
is  the  instrument  for  that  peculiar  vital  energy,  known 
more  or  less  to  all  students  as  Animal  Magnetism. 

Since  the  cat  is  somwhat  famous  in  all  witchcraft, 
let  me  state,  that  in  the  mesentery  of  the  cat,  they  can 
be  seen  in  large  numbers  with  the  naked  eye,  as  small 
oval-shaded  grains  a  little  smaller  than  hemp-seeds 
A  few  have  been  found  in  the  ox  (symbol  of  the 
priestly  office, )  but  they  are  wanting  in  all  birds,  am- 
phibia and  fishes. 

"Magic"  whether  brought  about  by  the  aid  of  spirits 
or  simply  through  an  understanding  of  secret  natural 
laws,  is  of  two  kinds,  "white"  and  "black,"  accord- 
ing as  its  intent  and  consequences  are  evil  or  good, 
and  in  this  respect  does  not  differ  from  the  use  made 
of  the  well  known  laws  of  nature,  which  are  ever  of 
good  or  evil  character,  in  the  hands  of  good  or  evil 
persons.  To  the  church  in  its  powerful  control  of  the 
human  will,  must  be  attributed  the  use  of  "black  magic," 
in  its  most  injurious  form.  Proof  that  knowledge  of 
the  mysterious  laws  governing  ordinary  natural  phe- 
nomena still  exists  even  among  civilized  people,  is 
indubitable.  Our  American  Indians  in  various  por- 
tions of  the  continent,  according  to  authorities,  also 
possess  power  to  produce  storms  of  thunder,  lightning 
and  rain.29 

A  vast  amount  of  evidence  exists,  to  show  that  the 
word  "witch"  formerly  signified  a  woman  of  superior 
knowledge.  Many  of  the  persons  called  witches 
loubtless  possessed  a  super-abundance  of  the  Pacinian 
corpuscles  in  hands  and  feet,  enabling  them  to  swim 

29.  These  and  similar  powers  known  as  magical,  are  given  as  pertaining  to 
the  Pueblo  Indians,  by  Charles  F.  Lummis,  in  Some  Strange  Corners  of  Our 
Country,  pub.  1892.  A  friend  of  the  author  witnessed  rain  thus  produced  by  a 
very  aged  Iowa  Indian  a  few  years  since. 


WITCHCRAFT  237 

when  cast  into  water  bound,  to  rise  in  the  air  against 
the  ordinary  action  of  gravity,  to  heal  by  a  touch,  and 
in  some  instances  to  sink  into  a  condition  of  catalepsy, 
perfectly  unconscious  of  torture  when  applied.  Many 
were  doubtless  psychic  sensitives  of  high  powers  simi- 
lar perhaps  to  the  "Sseress  of  Prevorst,"  whose  peculiar 
characteristics  were  the  subject  of  investigation  by  Dr. 
Kerner,  about  the  end  of  the  witch  period,  his  report 
forming  one  of  the  most  mysteriously  interesting  por- 
tions of  psychic  literature.  The  "Seeress"  was  able  to 
perceive  the  hidden  principles  of  all  vegetable  or  min- 
eral substances,  whether  beneficial  or  injurious.  Dr. 
Kerner  stated  that  her  magnetic  condition  might  be 
divided  into  four    degrees. 

First;  that  in  which  she  ordinarily  was  when  she 
appeared  to  be  awakened  but  on  the  contrary  was  the 
first  stage  of  her  inner  life,  many  persons  of  whom 
it  was  not  expected  and  who  was  not  aware  of  it 
themselves,  being  in  this  state. 

Second;  the  magnetic  dream,  which  she  believed  to 
be  the  condition  of  many  persons  who  were  regarded 
as  insane. 

Third;  the  half  wakening  state  when  she  spoke  and 
wrote  the  inner  language,  her  spirit  then  being  in  in- 
timate conjunction  whith  her  soul. 

Fourth;  her  clairvoyant  state. 

With  the  investigation  of  Dr  Kerner,  the  discov- 
eries of  Galvani,  Pacini,  and  those  more  recently  con- 
nected with  electricity,  notably  of  Edison  and  Nikolas 
Tesla,  the  world  seems  upon  the  eve  of  important 
knowledge  which  may  throw  full  light  upon  the  pecu- 
liar nerve  action  of  the  witch  period,  when  a  hola- 
caust  of  women  were  sacrificed,  victims  of  the  ignorance 
and  barbarity  of  the  church,  which  thus  retarded  civi- 
lization and  delayed  spiritual  progress  for  many  hun- 
dred years.      Besides  the  natural  psychics  who  formed 


238  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

a  large  proportion  of  the  victims  of  this  period,  other 
women  with  a  natural  spirit  of  investigation  made 
scientific  discoveries  with  equally  baleful  effect  upon 
themselves;  the  one  fact  of  a  woman's  possessing 
knowledge  serving  to  bring  her  under  the  suspicion 
and  accusation  of  the  church.  Henry  More,  a  learned 
Cambridge  graduate  of  the  seventeenth  century  wrote 
a  treatise  on  witchcraft  explanatory  of  the  term  "witch" 
which  he  affirmed  simply  signified  a  wise,  or  learned 
woman.  It  meant  "uncommon"  but  not  unlawful 
knowledge  or  skill.  It  will  assist  in  forming  an  opin- 
ion to  know  that  the  word  "witch"  is  from  wekken,  to 
prophesy  a  direct  bearing  upon  the  psychic  powers  of 
many  such  persons.  The  modern  Slavonian  or  Russian 
name  for  witch,  "vj£dma,"is  from  the  verb  "to  know" 
signifying  much  the  same  as  Veda.30  Muller  says 
"Veda"  means  the  same  as  the  wise,  "wisdom."  The 
Sanskrit  word  "Vidma"  answers  to  the  German  "wir 
wissen, "  which  literally  means  "we  know. "  A  Russian 
name  for  the  witch  "Zaharku,"  is  derived  from  the  verb 
"Znat, "  to  know.81  A  curious  account  of  modern 
Russian  belief  in  witchcraft  is  to  be  found  in  Madame 
Blavatsky's  "Isis  Unveiled."  The  German  word 
"Heke,  "that  is,  witch,  primarily  signified  priestess,  a 
wiseorsuperiorwomanwho  in  a  sylvan  temple  worshiped 
those  gods  and  goddesses  that  together  governed  earth 
and  heaven.  Not  alone  but  with  thousands  of  the 
people  for  whom  she  officiated  she  was  found  there 
especially  upon  Walpurgis  Night,  the  chief  Hexen 
(witch)  Sabbat  of  the  north.  A  German  scholar  fur- 
nished this  explantion. 

The  German    word    Heke,     (witch)  is  a    compound 
word  from  "hag"  and  "idisan"  or  "disan."  Hag  means 

30.  A  Hindoo  Scripture  whose  name  signifies  knowledge.— Max  Muller. 
%1,  his  Unveiled,  i,354- 


WITCHCRAFT  239 

a  beautiful  landscape,  woodland,  meadow,  field,  alto- 
gether. Idisen  means  female  deities,  wise-women. 
Hexen*Sabbat,  or  Walpurgis  Night  is  May  twelfth. 
Perfume  and  avocation — originally  the  old  gods — per- 
verted by  the  priests.  It  is  a  remnant  of  the  great 
gathering  to  worship  the  old  deities,  when  Christian- 
ity had  overshadowed  them.  A  monument  of  the  wed- 
ding of  Woden  or  Odin  with  Freia — Sun  and  Earth  at 
spring- time. 

The  Saxon  festival  "Eostre,"  the  christian  Easter, 
was  celebrated  in  April,  each  of  these  festivals  at  a 
time  when  winter  having  released  its  sway,  smiling 
earth  giving  her  life  to  healing  herbs  and  leaves,  once 
more  welcomed  her  worshipers.  In  the  south  of 
Europe,  the  month  of  October  peculiarly  belonged  to 
the  witches.32  The  first  of  May,  May-day,  was  es- 
pecially devoted  by  those  elementals  known  as  fairies, 
whose  special  rites  were  dances  upon  the  green  sward, 
leaving  curious  mementoes  of  their  visits  in  the  circles 
known  as  "Fairies  Rings."  In  reality  the  original 
meaning  of  "witch"  was  a  wise  woman.  So  also  the 
word  "Sab"  means  sage  or  wise,  and  "Saba"  a  host  or 
congregation;  M  while  "Bac,"  "Boc"  and  "Bacchus" 
s*  all  originally  signified  book.35  "Sabs"  was  the  name 
of  the  day  when  the  Celtic  Druids  gave  instruction 
and  is  the  origin  of    our  words  Sabbath  and    Sunday. 

32.  Of  which  the  tricks  of  Halloween  may  be  a  memento. 

33.  Anacalypsis,  Vol.  1,  p.  35. 

34.  Bacchus  was  not  originally  the  god  of  wine,  but  signified  books.  Instruc- 
tion of  old,  when  learning  was  a  secret  science,  was  given  by  means  of  leaves. 
"Bacchus  Sabiesa"  really  signified  "book  wise"  or  learned,  and  the  midsummer- 
day  festival  was  celebrated  in  honor  of  learning.  In  the  Anacalypsis  Higgins 
says:  "From  Celland  I  learn  that  in  Celtic,  Sab  means  wise,  whence  Saba  and 
Sabasius,  no  doubt  wise  in  the  stars.  From  this  comes  the  Sab-bath  day,  or  day 
dedicated  to  wisdom,  and  the  Sabbat,  a  species  of  French  masonry,  an  account 
of  which  may  be  seen  in  Dulare's  History  of  Paris.  Sunday  was  the  day  of  in- 
struction of  the  Druids,  whence  it  was  called  Sabs. — Ibid  1,  716. 

35-  From  the  preachment  of  the  Sabs,  or  Sages,  or  wise  Segent  Sarcedos.— 
Ibid  1,  716, 


24O  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

But  the  degradation  of  learning,  its  almost  total  loss 
among  christian  nations,  an  entire  change  in  the 
signification  of  words,  owing  to  ignorance  and  super- 
stition led  to  the  strangest  and  most  infamous  results. 
The  earliest  doctors  among  the  common  people  of 
christian  Europe  were  women  36  who  had  learned 
the  virtues  and  use  of  herbs.  The  famous  works  of 
Paracelsus  were  but  compilations  of  the  knowledge 
of  these  "wise  women"  as  he  himself  stated.  During 
the  feudal  ages  women  were  excellent  surgeons, 
wounded  warriors  frequently  falling  under  their  care 
and  to  the  skill  of  these  women  were  indebted  for  re- 
covery from  dangerous  wounds.  Among  the  women 
of  savage  races  to  much  greater  extent  than  among  the 
men,  a  knowledge  of  the  healing  powers  of  plants 
and  herbs  is  to  this  day  found.  But  while 
for  many  hundred  years  the  knowledge  of  medicine, 
and  its  practice  among  the  poorer  classes  was  almost 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  women  and  many  discoveries  in 
science  are  due  to  them,  yet  an  acquaintance  of  herbs 
soothing  to  pain,  or  healing  in  their  qualities,  was  then 
looked  upon  as  having  been  acquired  through  diabolical 
agency.  Even  those  persons  cured  through  the  instru- 
mentality of  some  woman,  were  ready  when  the  hour  came 
to  assert  their  belief  in  her  indebtedness  to  the  devil  for 
her  knowledge.  Not  only  were  the  common  people 
themselves  ignorant  of  all  science,  but  their  brains  were 
filled  with  superstitious  fears,  and  the  belief  that  know- 
ledge had  been  first  introduced  to  the  world  through 
woman's  obedience  to  the  devil.  In  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury the  church    decreed   that   any   woman    who   healed 

36.  The  only  physician  of  the  people  for  a  thousand  years  was  the  witch.  The 
emperors,  kings,  popes  and  richer  barons  had  indeed  the  doctors  of  Salermoi 
then  Moors  and  Jews,  but  the  bulk  of  the  people  in  every  state;  the  world,  it 
might  as  well  be  called,  consulted  none  but  the  Sages  or  wise  women.  Michelet. 
— La  Sorciire. 


WITCHCRAFT 


24I 


others  without  having  duly  studied,  was  a  witch  and 
should  suffer  death;  yet  in  that  same  century,  1527,  at 
Basle,  Paracelsus  threw  all  his  medical  works,  including 
those  of  Hippocrates  and  Galen  into  the  fire,  saying  that 
he  knew  nothing  except  what  he  had  learned  from 
witches.37  As  late  as  1736,  the  persecution  of  her 
male  compeers  cast  Elizabeth  Blackwell,  an  English 
woman  physician,  into  prison  for  debt.  Devoting  her- 
self even  behind  the  bars  to  her  loved  science,  she  pre- 
pared the  first  medical  botany  given  to  the  world.  The 
modern  discovery  of  anaesthetics  by  means  of  whose 
use  human  suffering  can  be  so  greatly  ameliorated,  is 
justly  claimed  as  the  greatest  boon  that  science  has  con- 
ferred upon  mankind,  yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
this  medical  art  of  mitigating  pain,  is  but  an  olden  one 
re-discovered.  Methods  of  causing  insensibility  to  pain 
were  known  to  the  ancient  world.  During  the  middle  ages 
these  secrets  were  only  understood  by  the  persecuted 
women  doctors  of  that  period,  subjected  under  church 
rule  to  torture,  burning  at  the  stake  or  drowning  as 
witches.  The  use  of  pain-destroying  medicaments  by 
women,  can  be  traced  back  from  five  hundred  to  a 
thousand  years.  At  the  time  that  witchcraft  became  the 
great  ogre  against  which  the  church  expended  all  its  ter- 
rific powers,  women  doctors  employed  anaesthetics  to  miti- 
gate the  pains  and  perils  of  motherhood,38throwing  the  suf- 
ferer into  a  deep  sleep  when  the  child  entered  the  world. 
They  made  use  of   the    Solanae,    especially   Belladonna. 

37.  I  make  no  doubt  that  his  (Paracelsus)  admirable  and  masterly  work  on  the 
Diseases  of  Women,  the  first  written  on  this  theme,  so  large,  so  deep,  so  tender, 
came  forth  from  his  special  experience  of  those  women  to  whom  others  went  for 
aid,  the  witches,  who  acted  as  midwives,  for  never  in  those  days  was  a  male  physi 
cian  admitted  to  the  women. — Ibid. 

38.  Within  the  past  fifty  years  the  death  rate  in  childbirth  was  forty  in  a 
thousand,  an  enormous  mortality,  and  although  the  advances  in  medical  knowl- 
edge have  somewhat  lessened  the  rate,  more  women  still  lose  their  lives  during 
childbirth  than  soldiers  in  battle. 


242  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

But  that  woman  should  find  relief  at  this  hour  of  intense 
suffering  and  peril  when  a  new  being  entered  the 
world,  provoked  open  hostility  from  the  church.  The 
use  of  mitigating  herbs  assailed  that  theory  of  the  church 
which  having  placed  the  creation  of  sin  upon  woman, 
still  further  inculcated  the  doctrine  that  she  must  un- 
dergo continual  penance,  the  greatest  suffering  being  a 
punishment  in  nowise  equal  to  her  deserts.  Its  teachings 
that  she  had  therefore  been  especially  cursed  by  her 
Maker  with  suffering  and  sorrow  at  this  period,  rendered 
the  use  of  mitigating  remedies  during  childbirth,  danger- 
ous alike  to  the  "wise  woman"  and  the  mother  for  whose 
relief  they  were  employed39  Although  the  present  cen- 
tury has  shown  similar  opposition  by  the  church  to  the 
use  of  anaesthetics  for  women  at  this  time,  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  depict  the  sentiment  against  such  relief 
which  made  the  witchcraft  period  one  of  especial  terror 
to  womankind — an  age  that  looked  upon  the  slightest 
attempt  at  such  alleviation  as  proof  of  collusion  with  the 
devil.  So  strong  was  the  power  of  the  church,  so  uni- 
versal the  belief  in  the  guilt  of  all  women,  that  even 
those  sufferers  who  had  availed  themselves  of  the  know- 
ledge of  the  "wise  woman"  did  so  in  fear  as  calling  in  the 
aid  of  evil,  and  were  ready  to  testify  against  her  to 
whom  they  had  been  indebted  for  alleviation  of  pain, 
whenever  required  by  the  dread  mandate  of  the  church. 
A  strong  natural  bias  toward  the  study  of  medicine,  to- 
gether with  deepest  sympathy  for  suffering  humanity, 
were  required  in  order  to  sustain  the  'wise  woman'  amid 
the  perils  constantly  surrounding  her;  many  such  women 
losing  their  lives  as  witches  simply  because  of  their 
superior   medical    and  surgical  knowledge.      Death  by 

39.  In  childbirth  a  motherly  hand  instilled  the  gentle  poison,  casting  the 
mother  herself  into  a  sleep,  and  soothing  the  infant's  passage,  after  the  manner 
of  modern  chloroform ,  into  the  world.— Michelet, 


WITCHCRAFT  243 

torture  was  the  method  of  the  church  for  the  repression 
of  woman's  intellect,  knowledge  being  held  as  evil 
and  dangerous  in  her  hands  Ignorance  was  regarded 
as  an  especial  virtue  in  woman,  and  fear  held  her  in  this 
condition.  Few  women  dared  be  wise,  after  thousands 
of  their  sex  had  gone  to  death  by  drowning  or  burning 
because  of  their  knowledge.  The  superior  learning  of 
witches  was  recognized  in  the  widely  extended  belief  of 
their  ability  to  work  miracles.  The  witch  was  in  reality 
the  profoundest  thinker,  the  most  advanced  scientist  of 
those  ages.  The  persecution  which  for  ages  waged 
against  witches  was  in  reality  an  attack  upon  science  at 
the  hands  of  the  church.  As  knowledge  has  ever  been 
power,  the  church  feared  its  use  in  woman's  hands,  and 
leveled  its  deadliest  blows  at  her.  Although  the  church 
in  its  myth  of  the  fall  attributes  knowledge  to  woman's 
having  eaten  of  its  tree,  yet  while  not  scrupling  to  make 
use  of  the  results  of  her  disobedience  for  its  own  benefit, 
it  has  been  most  earnest  in  its  endeavors  to  prevent  her 
from  like  use.  No  less  to-day  than  during  the  darkest 
period  of  its  history,  is  the  church  the  great  opponent 
of  woman's  education,  every  advance  step  for  her  hav- 
ing found  the  church  antagonistic. 

Every  kind  of  self-interest  was  brought  into  play  in 
these  accusations  of  witchcraft  against  women  physicians: 
greed,  malice,  envy,  hatred,  fear,  the  desire  of  clearing 
one's  self  from  suspicion,  all  became  motives.  Male 
physicians  not  skillful  enough  to  cure  disease  would  de- 
librately  swear  that  there  could  be  but  one  reason  for 
their  failure — the  use  of  witchcraft  against  them.  As 
the  charge  of  witchcraft  not  only  brought  disrepute  but 
death  upon  the  "wise  woman"  at  the  hands  of  the 
church,  she  was  soon  compelled  to  abandon  both  the 
practice  of  medicine  and  surgery,  and  for  many  hundred 


244  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

years  but  few  women  doctors  were  to  be  found  in  chris- 
tian countries.  It  is,  however,  a  noticeable  fact  that 
Madam  La  Chapelle,  an  eminent  woman  accoucher  of 
France,  during  the  present  century,  and  M.  Chaussure 
revived  the  use  of  Belladonna40  during  parturition,  thus 
acknowledging  the  scientific  acquirements  of  serf  women 
and  "witches."  Since  the  re-entrance  of  woman  into  the 
medical  profession  within  the  past  few  years,  the  world 
has  been  indebted  for  a  knowledge  of  the  cause  and  cure 
of  certain  forms  of  disease  peculiar  to  woman,  to  the 
skill  of  those  physicians  of  her  own  sex  whom  the 
church  so  long  banished  from  practice. 

Through  its  opposition  to  the  use  of  anaesthetics  by 
the  women  physicians  of  the  witch  period,  the  church 
again  interposed  the  weight  of  her  mighty  arm  to  crush 
science,  leaving  the  load  of  preventable  suffering  of  all 
kinds  upon  the  world  for  many  hundred  years  longer,  or 
until  the  light  of  a  scientific  civilization  threw  dis- 
credit upon  her  authority.  History  proves  that 
women  were  the  earliest  chemists.  The  witch  period 
also  shows  us  the  germs  of  a  medical  system,  the 
Homeopathic,  supposed  to  be  of  modern  origin, in  similia 
simihbus  curantur.  Among  the  strange  epidemics  of 
these  ages,  a  dancing  mania  appeared;  Belladonna 
among  whose  effects  is  the  desire  of  dancing,  was  em- 
ployed as  a  cure  of  the  "Dancing  Mania,"  and  thus 
the  theory  of  Hahnemann  was  forestalled.  During 
the  witch  period  these  sages  or  wise-women  were  be- 
lieved to  be  endowed  with  a  supernatural  or  magical 
power  of  curing  diseases.  They  were  also  regarded 
as  prophets  to  whom  the  secrets  of  the  future  were 
known.  The  women  of  ancient  Germany,  of  Gaul 
and  among  the  Celts  were  especially  famous  for  their 

40.  Poruchet  SoUnaees. 


WITCHCRAFT  245 

healing  powers,41  possessing  knowledge  by  which 
wounds  and  diseases  that  baffled  the  most  expert  male 
physicians  were  cured.  The  women  of  a  still  more 
ancient  period,  the  fame  of  whose  magical  powers  has 
descended  to  the  present  time,  Circe,  Medea  and 
Thracia,  were  evidently  physicians  of  the  highest 
skill.  The  secret  of  compounding  herbs  and  drugs 
left  by  Circe  to  her  descendants,  gave  them  power  over 
the  most  poisonous  serpents.  Chief  among  the  many 
herbs,  plants  and  roots  whose  virtues  were  discovered 
by  Medea,  that  of  Aconite  stands  pre-eminent.  The 
Thracian  nation  took  its  name  from  the  famous  Thracia 
whose  medical  skill  and  knowledge  of  herbs  was  so 
great  that  the  country  deemed  it  an  honor  to  thus  per- 
petuate her  name. 

Aside  from  women  of  superior  intelligence  who 
were  almost  invariably  accused  of  witchcraft,  the  old, 
the  insane,  the  bed-ridden,  the  idiotic,42  also  fell  under 
condemnation.  The  first  investigation  by  Rev.  Cotten 
Mather  in  America  resulted  in  the  hanging  of  a  half- 
witted Quaker  woman.  Later  still,  an  Indian  woman, 
an  insane  man,  and  another  woman  who  was  bed-ridden 
were  also  accused.  Under  the  present  theories  re- 
garding human  rights,  it  seems  scarcely  possible  that 
less  than  two  hundred  years  ago  such  practices  were  not 
only  common  in  England,  but  had  also  been  brought 
into  America  by  the  Puritan  Fathers.  The  humilia- 
tion and  tortures  of  women  increased  in  proportion  to 

41.  Alexander  — History  of  Women. 

42.  You  will  hardly  believe  it,  but  I  saw  a  real  witch's  skull,  the  other  evening, 
at  a  supper  party  I  had  the  pleasure  of  attending  It  was  at  the  house  of  Dr. 
Dow,  a  medical  gentleman  of  culture  and  great  skill  in  his  profession  here. 
You  will  admit  that  a  skull  is  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  exhibit  in  a  parlor,  and  some 
of  the  ladies  did  not  care  about  seeing  it;  but  the  majority  did,  and  you  know  one 
cannot  see  a  witch's  skull  every  day.  So,  after  a  little  hesitation  and  persuasion 
on  the  part  of  the  doctor,  he  produced  the  uncanny  thing  and  gave  us  its  history, 
or  rather  that  of  the  witch.    She  lived  at  Terryburn,  a  little  place  near  here 


246  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

the  spread  ot  Christianity,"  and  the  broader  area 
over  which  man's  sole  authority  in  church  and  state 
was  disseminated.  As  the  supreme  extent  of  spiritual 
wrong  grew  out  of  the  bondage  of  the  church  over  free 
thought,  so  the  extreme  of  physicial  wrong  rose  from 
the  growth  of  the  inquisitional  or  paternal  spirit., 
which  assumed  that  one  human  being  possessed  divine 
authority  over  another  human  being.  Paternalism,  a 
species  of  condensed  patriarchism,  runs  through 
ecclesiastical,  civil,  and  common  law.  Down  to  the 
time  of  the  American  revolution,  individuality  was  an 
uncomprehended  word ;  many  hundred  crimes  were 
punishable  by  death.  That  of  pressing  to  death, 
peinc-fort-et-dure,  the  strong  and  hard  pain,  was  prac- 
ticed upon  both  men  and  women  in  England  for  five 
hundred  years   and   brought  by   the  pilgrims  to    New 

One  day  it  came  to  the  ears  of  the  kirk  session  of  the  parish  that  she  had  had 
several  interviews  with  his  Satanic  Majesty.  Strange  enough,  when  the  woman 
was  brought  before  that  body — which  seems  to  have  been  all-powerful  in  the  sev- 
eral parishes  in  those  days— and  accused  of  it,  she  at  once  admitted  the  charge  to 
be  true.  The  poor  soul,  who  could  have  been  nothing  else  than  an  idiot,  as  the 
doctor  pointed  out  from  the  very  low  forehead  and  small  brain  cavity,  was  sen- 
tenced to  be  prevented  from  going  to  sleep;  or  in  other  words,  tortured  to  death, 
and  the  desired  end  was  attained  in  about  five  days,  her  body  being  buried  below 
high-water  mark. 

Her  name  was  Lilias  Adie,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  she  was  only  a  harmless 
imbecile.  The  skull,  and  also  a  piece  of  the  coffin,  were  presented  to  the  doctor 
by  a  friend  who  had  read  in  the  kirk  session  records  an  account  of  the  trial,  and 
went  to  the  spot  stated  as  being  the  place  of  burial.  The  remains  were  found  by 
him  exactly  as  indicated,  although  there  was  nothing  to  mark  their  resting  place. 
One  would  have  thought  that  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  years  it  would  be  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  find  them,  but  you  know  things  do  not  undergo  such  radical 
changes  in  this  country  as  they  do  in  America.— From  a  traveler's  letter  in  the 
"Syracuse  Journal,"  August  22, 1881. 

Almost  indistinguished  from  the  belief  in  witchcraft  was  the  belief  that  per- 
sons subject  to  epilepsy,  mania  or  any  form  of  mental  weakness,  were  possessed 
of  a  devil  who  could  be  expelled  by  certain  ieligious  ceremonies.  Pike.— His- 
tory of  Crime  in  England,  Vol.  pp.  7-8. 

43.  The  mysteries  of  the  human  conscience  and  of  human  motives  are  well 
nigh  inscrutable,  and  it  may  be  shocking  to  assert  that  these  customs  of  unmiti- 
gated wrong  are  indirectly  traceable  to  that  religion  of  which  the  two  great  com- 
mandments were  that  man  should  love  his  neighbor  as  himself.  Lea.— Supersti- 
tion and  Force%  53. 


WITCHCRAFT  2tf 

England.  The  culprit  was  placed  in  the  dark  lower 
room  of  some  prison,  naked,  upon  the  bare  ground 
without  clothing  on  rushes  underneath  or  to  cover  him. 
The  legs  and  arms  were  extended  toward  the  four 
corners  of  the  room  and  as  great  a  weight  placed  upon 
the  body  as   could    be   supported. 

"The  first  day  he  (or  she)  is  to  have  three  morsels 
of  barley  bread  ;  upon  the  second  day  three  draughts  of 
water  standing  next  to  the  door  of  the  prison, 
without  bread,  and  this  to  be  his  (or  her)  diet  till  he 
(or  she)  die." 

It  is  computed  from  historical  records  that  nine 
millions  of  persons  were  put  to  death  for  witchcraft 
after  1484,  or  during  a  period  of  three  hundred  years, 
and  this  estimate  does  not  include  the  vast  number  who 
were  sacrificed  in  the  preceding  centuries  upon  the 
same  accusation.  The  greater  number  of  this  incred- 
ible multitude  were  women.  Under  Catholicism, 
those  condemned  as  sorcerers  and  witches,  as  "here- 
tics," were  in  reality  the  most  advanced  thinkers  of 
the  christian  ages.  Under  that  protestant  pope,  the 
Eighth  Henry,  an  Act  of  Parliament  condemning  witch- 
craft as  felony  was  confirmed.  Enacted  under  Henry  V, 
it  had  fallen  into  disuse,  but  numerous  petitions  set- 
ting forth  that  witches  and  sorcerers  were  "wonder- 
ful many,"  and  his  majesty's  subjects  persecuted  to 
death  by  their  devices,  led  to  its  re-enactment.  The 
methods  used  to  extort  confession  without  which  it 
was  impossible  in  many  cases  to  convict  for  witch- 
craft, led  to  the  grossest  outrages  upon  woman. 
Searching  the  body  of  the  suspected  witch  for  the 
marks  of  Satan,  and  the  practice  of  shaving  the  whole 
body  before  applying  torture  were  occasions  of  atro- 
cious indignities.   It  was  averted  that  all  who  consort 


248  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

ed  with  devils  had  some   secret    mark   about  them,  in 
some   hidden  place   of   their  bodies;  as    the  inside  of 
the  lip,  the  hair  of  the  eyebrows,  inside  of  the    thigh, 
the  hollow  of  the  arm  or  still  more  private  parts,  from 
whence  Satan  drew    nourishment.     This  originated  a 
class  of  men  known  as  "Witch  Prickers"  who    divest- 
ing    the    supposed    witch,  whether  maid,     matron,  or 
child,  of  all  clothing  minutely    examined    all  parts  of 
her  body   for  the    devil's  sign.      Woe    to    the    woman 
possessing  a  mole  or  other  blemish  upon   her  person ; 
it  was  immediately  pointed  to   as  Satan's   seal  and  as 
undeniable   proof  of   having  sold  herself  to    the  devil. 
Belief  in  this  sign  existed   among  the   most  educated 
persons.     Albertus   Pictus,  an   advocate  in  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Paris,  declared  he  himself  had  seen  a  woman 
with  the  devil's  mark  on  her  shoulders,  carried  off  the 
next    day    by    the   devil.     Many    authors  affirmed  the 
trustworthiness  of  witch-marks.     It  was  supposed  that 
upon  touching  the  place  the  witch  would  be  unable  to 
speak.      If  under  the   torture   of  having   every  portion 
of  her  body  punctured  by  a  sharp  instrument,  the  vic- 
tim became  no  longer  able  to  cry  out,  her  silence  was 
an    accepted    proof  of  finding  the  witch-mark  and  her 
condemnation  was  equally  certain.     So  great   was   the 
number   of    accused,  that  these  men  found    profitable 
employment.   The  depth  of  iniquity  to  which  greed  of 
money  leads  was  never  more  forcibly  shown  than  dur- 
ing witchcraft.     One    Kincaid,  a   New  England  Witch 
Pricker,  after    stripping    his   victims  of    all  clothing, 
bound  them  hand  and  foot,  then  thrust  pins  into  every 
part  of  their  bodies  until  exhausted  and  rendered  speech- 
less by  the  torture,  they  were  unable  to  scream,  when 
he  would    triumphantly  proclaim    that  he  had    found 
the  witch  mark.     Another  confessed  on  the  gallows,  to 


WITCHCRAFT  249 

which  a  just  fate  finally  condemned  him,  that  he  had 
illegally  caused  the  death  of  one  hundred  and  twenty 
women  whom  he  had  thus  tortured.  No  means  were 
considered  too  severe  in  order  to  secure  conviction. 
The  Jesuit,  Del  Rio,  said  torture  could  scarcely  be  pro- 
perly administered  without  more  or  less  dislocation 
of  the  joints,  and  persons  escaping  conviction  were 
frequently  crippled  for  life.44  The  church  declared  the 
female  sex  had  always  been  most  concerned  in  the 
crime  of  christian  witchcraft  and  as  it  was  its  aim 
to  separate  woman  from  all  connection  with  its  ordin- 
ances, it  also  asserted  that  the  priestesses  of  antiquity 
held  their  high  places  by  means  of  witchcraft. 

Trials  for  witchcraft  filled  the  coffers  of  the  church, 
as  whenever  conviction  took  place,  the  property  of  the 
witch  and  her  family  was  confiscated  to  that  body. 
The  clergy  fattened  upon  the  torture  and  burning  of 
women.  Books  giving  directions  for  the  punishment 
to  be  inflicted  upon  them  bore  the  significant  titles  of 
"Scourge",  "Hammer"'  "Ant  Hills,"  "Floggings,"  etc. 
During  the  middle  ages  the  devil  was  a  personal  be- 
ing to  the  church  with  power  about  equal  to  that  of 
God,  his  kingdom  maintaining  its  equilibrium  with 
the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost  of  Heaven,  by  means 
of  three  persons  in  Hell ;  Lucifer,  Beelzebub  and 
Leviathan.  In  this  era  of  christian  devil-worship  the 
three  in  hell  equipoised  the  three  in  the  Godhead. 
Marriage  with  devils  was  one  of  the  most  ordinary 
accusation  in  witch  trials.  Such  connections  were 
sometimes  regarded  with  pride  ;  the  celebrated  marshall 
de  Bassompierre  boasting  that  the  founder  of  his 
family  was  engendered  from  communion  with  a  spirit. 
It  was  reported  of  the  mother  of  Luther  that  she   was 

44.  Fox's  Book  0/  Martyrs,  gives  account  of  persons  brought  into  court  upon 


250  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

familiar  with  an  Incubus.  During  this  period  many 
nuns  and  married  women  confessed  to  having  been 
visited  by  Incubi  of  whose  visits  no  spiritual  efforts 
could  rid  them.  Church  history  also  proves  that 
young  girls  and  boys,  many  under  ten  years  of  age 
were  tried  for  intercourse  with  such  spirits.  Those 
infesting  men  were  known  as  Succubi.  Lady  Frances 
Howard,  daughter  of  the  earl  of  Suffolk,  obtained  a 
divorce  from  her  husband  because  of  his  connection 
with  a  Succubus. 

One  of  the  most  notable  things  connected  with  such 
accusation  was  the  frequent  confession  of  its  truthful- 
ness. In  1459,  a  great  number  of  witches  and  wizards 
were  burned,45  who  publicly  confessed  to  their  use  of 
ungents,  to  their  dances,  feasts,  and  their  consort  with 
devils.  A  Vicar  General46  among  the  Laodunenses, 
at  his  death  left  confession  of  his  witch-rides,  his 
copulation  with  devils,  etc.  Nor  is  the  present  age  free 
from  similar  confessions.  Talesof  marriage  with  spirits  ; 
of  dead  lovers  paying  nightly  visits  to  the  living 
betrothed — of  Incubi  consorting  with  willing  or  unwill- 
ing victims; — all  those  mediaeval  statements  regarding 
the  intercourse  of  spirits  of  the  dead  with  the  living, 
all  the  customs  of  witchcraft  and  sorcery  are  paral- 
leled in  our  midst  to-day;  and  such  statements  do  not 
come  from  the  ignorant  and  superstitious,  but  are 
made  by  persons  of  intelligence  as  within  their  own 
personal  experience.  During  the  witchcraft  period 
familiarity  of  this  nature  with  Incubi  or  Succubi 
was  punished  with  death.  Occasionally  a  person  was 
found    of    sufficient    saintliness    to    exorcise  them    as 

litters  six  months  after  having  been  subjected  to  the  rack. 

45.  In  this  case  both  men  and  women  says  Johannus  Megerus,  author  of  a 
History  of  Flanders. 

46.  Adrianus  Ferrens. 


WITCHCRAFT  25 I 

Elementals  are  said  to  have  been  exorcised  during  the 
last  half  of  the  present  century.47     Devils  were  said  to 
be  very  fond  of  women  with  beautiful  hair   and  the  di- 
rection of   St.  Paul   in  regard  to  woman's  keeping  her 
head  covered,  was   not    always  regarded   as    a    sign  of 
inferiority,  but  sometimes  believed  to  be  a  precaution- 
ary admonition    intended  for   the    safety    of    christian 
women.48    To    this    day   the    people  of    some    eastern 
countries,  men  and  women  alike,  will  not   expose  the 
head  uncovered,  because  of  the  danger   of  thus  giving 
entrance   to   certain    invisible  beings  of    an    injurious 
character;  the  Persians   in    particular,  wearing    a  tur- 
ban or  cloth  of  peculiar  appearance  called  Mathoomba. 
Confessions  of   magical  and  witchcraft  practices  were 
by  no  means  rare  even  among  the  highest  church  dig- 
nitaries who  implicated  themselves  by    such    avowals. 
It  was  customary  to  attribute  the  practice  of  magic  to 
the  most  holy  fathers  of  the  church.      The  popes  from 
Sylvester    II.  to   Gregory    VII.     were    all  believed  to 
have  been  magicians      Benedict  IX.   was  also  thus  ac- 
cused.    The  difference  between  the  practices  of  men  and 
of  women  existed  only  in    name.     What    was    termed 
magic,  among  men,  was  called    witchcraft   in     woman. 
The  one  was  rarely,  the  other  invariably,  punished. 

The  practice  of  magic  by  the  holy  fathers  was  in 
furtherance  of  private  or  ecclesiastical  advancement 
and  therefore  legitimate  in  the  eye  of  the  church. 
Yet,  death-bed  repentance  was  by  no  means  infrequent. 
Of  Pope  Sylvester,  it  is  said,  that  convinced  of  his 
sinfulness  in  having  practiced  magic,   upon  his  death- 

47.  St.  Bernard  exorcised  a  demon  Incubus,  who  for  six  years  maintained 
commerce  with  a  woman,  who  could  not  get  rid  of  him.  Lea. — Studies  in  Church 
History, 

48.  It  was  observed  they  (devils)  had  a  peculiar  attachment  to  women  with 
beautiful  hair,  and  it  was  an  old  Catholic  belief  that  St.  Paul  alluded  to  this  in 
that  somewhat  obscure  passage  in  which  he  exhorts  women  to  cover  their  heads 
because  of  the  angels.— Sprangler, 


252  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

bed  he  ordered  his  tongue  to  be  torn  out  and  his 
hands  cut  off  because  he  had  sacrificed  to  the  devil; 
having  learned  the  art  when  Bishop  of  Rheims.  The 
significant  question  as  to  whether  magnetism  or 
hypnotism  was  not  a  custom  of  the  church  during  the 
middle  ages,  as  part  of  the  "magic"  practiced  by  illus- 
trious ecclesiastical  dignitaries,  is  one  of  importance  in 
view  of  recent  hypnotic  experiments.  The  fact  that 
by  means  of  "suggestion"  the  responsibility  for  crime 
and  the  perpetration  of  overt  criminal  acts,  can  be 
made  to  fall  upon  persons  entirely  innocent  of  crimi- 
nal intention,  who,  at  the  time  are  in  a  condition  of 
irresponsibility,  while  the  actual  felon,  the  person  who 
incited  the  act  remains  unknown  and  unsuspected 
exceeds  in  malign  power  all  that  Christendom  has 
taught  regarding  the  evil  one.  Science  trembles  on 
the  verge  of  important  discoveries  which  may  open 
the  door  for  a  full  understanding  of  mediaeval  witch- 
craft. The  Scotch  woman  who  asked  if  a  person 
could  not  be  a  witch  without  knowing  it,  had  intui- 
tive perception  that  by  the  action  of  one  person  upon 
another,  consequences  could  be  induced  of  which  the 
perpetrator    was   entirely    guiltless.49      Doubtless    the 

49.  The  attention  of  scientific  men  and  governments  has  recently  been  directed 
to  what  are  now  called"  The  Accursed  Sciences*'  under  whose  action  certain  crimes 
have  been  committed  from  "suggestion,"  the  hand  which  executed  being  only 
that  of  an  irresponsible  automaton,  whose  memory  preserves  no  traces  of  it.  The 
French  Academy  has  just  been  debating  the  question — how  far  a  hypnotized  sub- 
ject from  a  mere  victim  can  become  a  regular  tool  of  crime. — Lucifer,  October 
1887. 

"Merck's  Bulletin,"  New  York  medical  journal,  in  an  editorial  entitled  Modern 
Witchcraft,  December,  1892,  relates  some  astonishing  experiments  recently  made 
at  the  Hopital  de  la  Chariti,  Paris,  in  which  the  power  to  "exteriorize  sensi- 
bility M  has  been  discovered,  reproducible  at  will ;  suggestion  through  means  of 
simulated  pinching  producing  suffering  ;  photographs  sensitive  to  their  origi- 
nals even  having  produced.  Thus  modern  science  stamps  with  truthfulness 
the  power  asserted  as  pertaining  to  black  magicians,  of  causing  suffering  or 
death  through  means  of  a  waxen  image  of  a  person.  "  The  Accursed  Sciences," 
although  brought  to  the  bar  of  modern  investigating  knowledge,  seem  not  yet 
to  have  yielded  the  secrets  of  the  law  under  which  they  are  rendered  possible. 


WITCHCRAFT  253 

strange  power  which  certain  persons  are  capable  of 
wielding  over  others,  at  present  calling  the  attention 
of  scientific  investigators,  was  very  common  during 
the  witchcraft  period.  Of  this  power  the  church  as 
self-constituted  guardian  of  the  esoteric  sciences  was 
fully  aware,  frequently  making  it  the  method  through 
which  envy,  greed  and  revenge,  satisfied  themselves 
while  throwing  the  external  appearance  of  guilt  upon 
others.  The  most  complete  protection  against  such 
powers, — a  strong  will, — it  has  ever  been  the  aim  of 
the  church  to  destroy.  Freedom  of  the  will  has  ever 
held  place  in  clerical  denunciation  by  side  of  "original 
sin,"  and  punished  as  sorcery.50 

A  reminiscence  of  olden  magic—  far  older  than  the 
witchcraft  period  is  found  in  the  Masonic  lamenta- 
tion over  the  "lost  word."  This  "lost  word,"  the 
"supreme  word,  "  by  whose  use  all  things  can  be  sub- 
dued, is  still  the  quest  of  a  certain  portion  of  the 
world;  and  sorcerers  are  still  mentioned,  who  cannot 
die  until  a  certain  mysterious  word  is  passed  from 
"mouth  to  ear."  One  of  the  latest  occult  societies 
extant,  its  membership  widely  extended,  claims  its 
origin  from  a  mysterious  word  similarly  passed.  The 
Lord's  Prayer  demands  the  making  whole  (hallowed), 
of  the  Father's  name,  evidently  in  the  esoteric  sense 
referring  to  that  loss  which  dwells  in  the  minds  of 
men  through  tradition,  a  species  of  unwritten  history. 
With  the  restoration  of  the  feminine  in  all  its  attri- 
butes to  its  rightful  place  everywhere,  in  realms  seen 
and  unseen,  the  lost  power  will  have  been  restored, 
the  "lost  name"  have  been  found.  Numbers  are  close- 
ly connected    with   names,  their    early  knowledge  not 

50.  in  1609  six  hundred  sorcerers  were  convicted  in  the  Province  of  Bordeaux, 
France,  most  of  whom  were  burned.— Dr.  Priestly.  Within  the  last  year  fourteen 
women  have  been  tried  in  France  for  sorcery. 


254  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

only  having  preceded  letters,  but  having  been  of  much 
greater  value,  although  after  a  time,  letters  and  num- 
bers became  interchangeable.  Certain  persons  devoted 
to  the  consideration  of  occult  subjects  therefore  claim 
the  lost  power  to  abide  in  a  number  rather  than  in  a 
word  ;  sounds  possessing  great  and  peculiar  influence 
in  all  magical  formulas,  their  power  largely  depending 
upon  inflection  and  tone  or  vibration;  color  and  light 
are  also  called  in  aid  during  magical  formulas.61 

The  three  most  distinguishing  features  of  the  history 
of  witchcraft  were  its  use  for  the  enrichment  of  the 
church;  for  the  advancement  of  political  schemes;  and 
for  the  gratification  of  private  malice.  Among  these 
the  most  influential  reason  was  the  emolument  it 
brought  to  the  church.  Although  inquisitors  and  the 
clergy  were  the  principal  prosecutors,  this  period  gave 
opportunity  for  the  gratification  of  private  malice,  and 
persons  imbued  with  secret  enmity  towards  others, 
or  who  coveted  their  property,  found  ready  occasion 
for  the  indulgence  of  that  malice  of  covetousness; 
while  the  church  always  claimed  one-half,  it  divided 
the  remainder  of  the  accused's  possessions  between 
the  judge  and  the  prosecutor.  Under  these  circum- 
stances accusation  and  conviction  became  convertible 
terms.  The  pretense  under  which  the  church  confis- 
cated to  itself  all  property  of  the  accused  was  in  line 
with  its  other  sophistical  teaching.  It  declared  that 
the  taint  of  witchcraft  hung  to  all  that  had  belonged 
to  the  condemned,  whose    friends   were   not  safe  with 

51.  The  supreme  end  of  magic  is  to  conjure  the  spirits.  The  highest  and  most 
inscrutable  of  all  the  powers  dwells  in  the  divine  and  mysterious  name,  "The 
Supreme  Name,"  with  which  Hea  alone  is  acquainted.  Before  this  name  every- 
thing bows  in  heaven  and  earth,  and  in  hades,  and  it  alone  can  conquer  the 
Maskim  and  stop  their  ravages.  The  great  name  remained  the  secret  of  Hea;  if 
any  man  succeeded  in  divining  it,  that  alone  would  invest  him  with  a  power 
superior  to  the  gods. — Chaldean  Magic  and  Sorcery, 


WITCHCRAFT  255 

such  property  in  their  possession.  To  make  this 
claim  more  effective,  it  was  also  asserted  that  the  very 
fact  of  one  member  of  a  family  having  fallen  into  the 
practice  of  this  sin  was  virtual  proof  that  all  were 
likewise  attainted.  Under  this  allegation  of  the 
church,  a  protest  against  such  robbery  was  held  as 
proof  of  the  witchcraft  in  the  person  so  protesting. 
For  the  purpose  of  getting  the  property  of  the  accused 
admission  of  the  crime  was  strenously  pressed.  In 
some  countries  the  property  was  not  forfeited  unless 
such  confession  took  place.  Persecution  for  witch- 
craft was  if  possible  more  violent  in  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries  than  at  any  previous  date. 
By  this  period  it  had  been  introduced  into  America 
through  the  instrumentality  of  the  Puritan  Fathers. 
It  was  no  less  wide-spread  in  Calvinistic  Scotland, 
while  it  re-appeared  with  renewed  vigor  in  Catholic 
countries.  In  the  State  of  Venice  it  caused  open  re- 
bellion against  church  authority,  the  Council  forbid- 
ding the  sentence  of  the  Inquisition  to  be  carried 
out.82 

While  only  Venice  in  the  whole  of  Europe  defied 
the  church  upon  this  point,  emphatically  protesting 
against  such  robbery  of  her  citizens,  she  ultimately 
succeeded  in  establishing  a  treaty  with  the  pope 
whereby  the  inheritance  of  the  condemned  was  retained 
in  the  family.  The  rebellion  of  Venice  against  the 
church  upon  the  question  of  property  belonging  to  its 
subjects,  a  question  upon  which  the    state  held   itself 

52.  Venitians  concluded  not  unreasonably  that  the  latter  ran  no  more  risk  from 
the  taint  of  witchcraft  attached  to  their  inheritance  than  did  the  clergy  or  the 
church.  Where  profits  were  all  spiritual  their  ardor  soon  cooled.  Thus  it  hap- 
pened as  the  inevitable  result  of  the  peoples  attitude  in  religious  matters,  that 
while  in  Venice  there  were  representatives  of  the  vast  sisterhood,  which  extended 
from  the  Blockula  of  Sweden  to  the  walnut  tree  of  Beneveuto,  sorcery  there 
never  became  the  terrible  scourge  that  it  was  in  other  lands  where  its  victims  at 
times  threatened  to  outnumber  those  of  the  Black  Death.— The  Witches  0/  Ven  ice. 


256  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

pre-eminent,  soon  effected  a  radical  change  and  had 
remarkable  effect  in  lessening  the  number  of  accusa- 
tions in  that  state.53  Theft  by  the  church  in  that 
direction,  no  longer  possible,  accusations  of  witch- 
craft soon  ceased ;  being  no  longer  recognized  as 
sin,  after  ceasing  to  bring  money  into  the  coffers  of 
the  church. 

It  is  a  fact  noted  by  very  many  authorities  that 
when  witchcraft  fell  under  control  of  the  state,  its  pen- 
alties were  greatly  lessened  while  accusations  grew 
fewer.  Yet  for  a  period,  even  the  civil  power  aided 
in  spreading  this  belief,  offering  rewards  for  conviction; 
and  as  the  church  had  grown  immensely  rich  by  means 
of  witch  persecution,  so  the  state  increased  its  own 
power  and  wealth  through  similar  means.  The  the- 
ory of  Bishop  Butler  that  whole  communities  at  times 
become  mad,  seems  proven  by  the  experience  of  this 
period.  Upon  no  other  ground  but  that  of  universal 
insanity  can  excusable  explanation  be  offered.  But 
for  the  church  no  such  exculpation  is  possible,  her 
teachings  and  her  acts  having  created  this  wholesale 
madness  of  communities.  Experience  of  her  course 
during  preceding  centuries  shows  us  that  the  persecu- 
tion of  the  witchcraft  period  was  but  a  continuation 
of  her  policy  from  the  moment  of  her  existence — that 
of  universal  dominion  over  the  lives,  the  property,  and 
the  thoughts  of  mankind.  Neither  rank,  nor  learning, 
age,  nor  goodness  freed  a  woman  from  accusation.5* 
The  mother  of  the  great  astronomer,  Kepler,  a  woman 

53.  One  of  the  most  powerful  features  of  the  belief  in  witchcraft  was  the 
power  that  greed  had  in  producing  belief  and  causing  persecution.  The  church 
had  grown  rich  from  such  trials,  and  the  state  was  now  to  take  its  turn.  By  the 
public  offering  of  a  reward  for  the  finding  of  witches,  their  numbers  greatly  in- 
creased. 

54.  The  most  exceptional  conduct,  the  purest  morals  in  constant  practice  of 
every  day  life,  are  not  sufficient  security  against  the  suspicion  of  errors  like  these 
— Montesquieu. 


WITCHCRAFT  257 

of  noble  family,  died  in  chains  having  been  accused 
of  witchcraft.55  The  council  of  Bourges  tortured  a  re- 
puted witch  who  was  only  known  for  her  good  works. 
A  determined  effort  for  the  destruction  of  every  virtue 
among  women  seemed  made  at  this  period.  In  the 
middle  of  the  XIII.  century,  the  Emperor  Theodore 
Lascarius  caused  a  noble  lady  of  his  court  to  be 
entirely  stripped  of  her  clothing,  and  placed  thus 
nude  in  a  sack  with  cats,  but  even  this  torture  failed 
to  extort  a  confession  from  her  innocent  lips.  Even 
in  America,  women  of  the  purest  lives,  all  of  whose 
years  had  been  given  to  good  works,  met  with  death 
from  like  accusation. 

Soon  after  the  confirmation  of  celibacy  as  a  dogma 
of  the  church,  at  the  time  when  the  persecution  for 
witchcraft  so  rapidly  increased,  which  was  also  the 
period  of  the  greatest  oppression  under  feudalism — a 
peculiar  and  silent  rebellion  against  both  church  and 
state  took  place  among  the  peasantry  of  Europe,  who  as- 
sembled in  the  seclusion  of  night  and  the  forest,  their 
only  place  of  safety  in  which  to  speak  of  their  wrongs. 
Freedom  for  the  peasant  was  found  only  at  night. 
Known  as  "Birds  of  the  Night,"  "Foxes,"  "Birds  of 
Prey,"  it  was  only  at  night  assemblages  that  they  en- 
joyed the  least  happiness  or  freedom.  Here  with 
wives  and  daughters,  they  met  to  talk  over  the  gross 
outrages  perpetrated  upon  them.  Out  of  their  foul 
wrongs  grew  the  sacrifice  of  the  "Black  Mass"  with 
women  as  officiating  priestess,  in  which  the  rites  of 
the  church  were  travestied  in  solemn  mockery,and  defi- 
ance cast  at  that  heaven  which  permitted  the  priest 
and  the  lord  alike  to  trample  upon  all  the  sacred 
rights  of  womanhood,  in  the  name  of  religion  and  law. 
During  this  mocking  service  a  true  sacrifice    of   wheat 

55.  For  a  number  of  years  her  celebrated   son  struggled   amid   his  scientific 
Studies  for  the  perservation  of  her  life. 


258  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

was  offered  to  the  "Spirit  of  the  Earth"  who  made  wheat 
to  grow,  and  loosened  birds  bore  aloft  to  the  "God  of 
Freedom"  the  sighs  and  prayers  of  the  serfs  asking 
that  their  descendants  might  be  free.  We  can  but  re- 
gard this  sacrifice  as  the  most  acceptable  offering 
made  in  that  day  of  moral  degradation ;  a  sacrifice 
and  a  prayer  more  holy  than  all  the  ceremonials  of 
the  church.  This  service  where  woman  by  virtue 
of  her  greater  despair  acted  both  as  altar  and  priest, 
opened  with  the  following  address  and  prayer.  "I 
will  come  before  Thine  altar,  but  save  me,  O,  Lord, 
from  the  faithless  and  violent  man!"  (from  the  priest 
and  the  baron. )M  From  these  assemblages  known  as 
"Sabbat"  or  "the  Sabbath"  from  the  old  Pagan  mid- 
summer-day sacrifice  to  "Bacchus  Sabiesa"  rose  the 
belief  in  the  "Witches  Sabbath,"  which  for  several 
hundred  years  formed  a  source  of  accusation  against 
women,  sending  tens  of  thousands  to  most  horrible 
deaths.  The  thirteenth  century  was  about  the  central 
period  of  this  rebellion  of  the  serfs  against  God  and 
the  church  when  they  drank  each  other's  blood  as  a 
sacrament,  while  secretly  speaking  of  their  oppression.57 
The  officiating  priestess  was  usually  about  thirty 
years  old,  having  experienced  all  the  wrongs  that 
woman  suffered  under  church  and  state.  She  was  en- 
titled "The  Elder"  yet  in  defiance  of  that  God  to 
whom  the  serfs  under  church  teaching  ascribed  all  their 
wrongs,  she  was  also  called  "The  Devil's  bride." 
This  period  was  especially  that  of   woman's   rebellion 

56.  Michelet. — Le  Sorcerie  151.     See  Papers  on  the  Bastile. 

57.  In  its  earliest  phase  the  Black  Mass  seemed  to  betoken  the  redemption  of 
Eve,  so  long  accused  by  Christianity.  The  woman  filled  every  place  in  the  Sab- 
bath. Following  its  celebration  was  the  denial  of  Jesus,  by  whose  authority  the 
priests  and  barons  robbed  the  serf  of  human  hope — the  paying  of  homage  to  the 
new  matter— the  feudal  kiss.  To  the  closing  ceremonies,  "The  Feast  of  Peace," 
no  man  was  admitted  unaccompanied  by  a  woman.— La  Sorcerie, 


WITCHCRAFT  2$Q 

against  the  existing  order  of  religion  and  government 
in  both  church  and  state.  While  man  was  connected 
with  her  in  these  ceremonies  as  father,  husband, 
brother,  yet  all  accounts  show  that  to  woman  as  the 
most  deeply  wronged,  was  accorded  all  authority.  With- 
out her,  no  man  was  admitted  to  this  celebration, 
which  took  place  in  the  seclusion  of  the  forest  and 
under  the  utmost  secrecy.  Offerings  were  made  to  the 
latest  dead  and  the  most  newly  born  of  the  district, 
and  defiance  hurled  against  that  God  to  whose  injust- 
ice the  church  had  taught  woman  that  all  her  wrongs 
were  due. 

Woman's  knowledge  of  herbs  was  made  use  of  in 
a  preparation  of  Solanae  which  mixed  with  mead, 
beer,  cider,  or  farcy,  —  the  strong  drink  of  the  west — 
disposed  the  oppressed  serfs  to  joyous  dancing  and 
partial  forgetfulness  of  their  wrongs  during  these  pop- 
ular night  gatherings  of  the  Sabbath.68  It  became 
"the  comforter"  throwing  the  friendly  mantle  of  par- 
tial oblivion  over  the  mental  suffering  of  "him  who 
had  been  so  wronged"  as  it  had  done  for  the  mother's 
physical  pain.  "The  Sabbath"  was  evidently  the 
secret  protest  of  men  and  women  whom  church  and 
state  in  combination  had  utterly  oppressed  and  de- 
graded. For  centuries  there  seemed  no  hope  for  this 
class  of  humanity — for  this  degraded  portion  of  Christen- 
dom— yet,  even  then  women  held  position  of  superi- 
ority in  these  night  assemblages.  Among  the  "Papers 
of  the  Bastile, "  a  more  extended  account  of  woman 
officiating  as  her  own  altar,  is  to  be  found.59 

58.  "This  word  at  different  times  clearly  meant  quite  different  things.  In  the 
14th  century,  under  the  Avignon  popes,  during  the  ereat  schism  when  the  church 
with  two  heads  seems  no  longer  a  church,  the  Sabbath  took  the  horrible  form  of 
the  Black  Mass." 

59-  This  important  part  of  the  woman  being  her  own  altar,  is  known  to  us  by 
the  trial  of  La  Voisin,  which  M.  Revanna  Sen.  published  with  o  ther  Papers  of  tht 
Bastile. —Ibid. 


260  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

The  injustice  of  man  towards  woman  under  the 
laws  of  both  Church  and  State  engrafted  upon  society, 
have  resulted  in  many  evils  unsuspected  by  the  world, 
which  if  known  would  strike  it  with  amazement  and 
terror.  Even  Louis  Lingg,  one  of  the  condemned 
Chicago  anarchists,  young,  handsome,  of  vigorous  in- 
tellect, who  uncomplainingly  accepted  for  himself 
that  death  he  had  decreed  to  the  representatives  to 
law;  even  he,  who  neither  asked  mercy  nor  accepted  the 
death  decreed  him,  was  the  outgrowth  of  woman's 
wrongs.  His  mother  with  whom  his  fate  was  thrown, 
a  woman  of  the  people  in  Hungary,  belonging  to  a 
powerless  class  crushed  for  centuries,  the  plaything  of 
those  above  them; — his  father, a  representative  of  the 
aristocracy  descended  from  a  long  line  of  military 
ancestors,  leaving  him,  as  the  church  had  taught  him, 
to  the  sole  care  of  the  mother  he  had  betrayed, 
it  was  impossible  for  this  boy  not  to  find  in  his  breast 
a  turmoil  of  conflicting  emotions,  but  above  all,  ruling 
all,  a  hatred  of  entrenched  oppression;  nor  did  his 
father's  military  blood  fail  to  play  its  part,  leading  to 
the  final  result  which  affrighted  a  city  and  closed  his 
young  life. 

In  looking  at  the  history  of  witchcraft  we  see  three 
striking  points  for  consideration: 

First;  That  women  were  chiefly  accused. 

Second;  That  men  believing  in  woman's  inherent 
wickedness,  and  understanding  neither  the  mental  nor 
the  physical  peculiarities  of  her  being,  ascribed  all  her 
idiosyncrasies  to  witchcraft. 

Third;  That  the  clergy  inculcated  the  idea  that 
woman  was  in  league  with  the  devil,  and  that  strong 
intellect,  remarkable  beauty,  or  unusual  sickness  were 
in  themselves  proof  of  this  league. 


WITCHCRAFT  26l 

Catholics  and  protestants  yet  agree  in  holding 
women  as  the  chief  accessory  of  the  devil.60 

The  belief  in  witches  indeed  seemed  intensified 
after  the  reformation.  Luther  said  :  "I  would  have 
no  compassion  for  a  witch,  I  would  burn  them  all. " 
He  looked  upon  those  who  were  afflicted  with  blind- 
ness, lameness,  or  idiocy  from  birth,61  as  possessed  of 
demons  and  there  is  record  of  his  attempt  to  drown 
an  afflicted  child  in  whom  he  declared  no  soul  existed, 
its  body  being  animated  by  the  devil  alone.  But  a 
magistrate  more  enlightened  or  more  humane  than  the 
great  reformer,  interfered  to  save  the  child's  life. 
Were  Luther  on  earth  again  to  day  with  the  senti- 
ments of  his  lifetime,  he  would  regard  the  whole  com- 
munity as  mad.  Asylums  for  the  blind,  the  dumb 
and  idiots,  curative  treatment  for  cripples  and  all  per- 
sons naturally  deformed,  would  be  to  him  a  direct  in- 
tervention with  the  ways  of  providence.  The  belief 
of  this  great  reformer  proves  the  folly  of  considering 
a  man  wise,  because  he  is  pious.  Religion  and  human- 
ity were  as  far  apart  with  him  after  the  reformation  as 
while  he  was  yet  a  monk.  The  fruits  of  monasticism 
continued  their  effects,  and  his  latter  life  showed 
slight  intellectual  or  spiritual  advancement.  As  late 
as  1768  John  Wesley  declared  the  giving  up  of  witch- 
craft  to    be   in   effect  giving  up  the  Bible.     Such  was 

60.  That  women  have  been  more  addicted  to  this  devilish  art  than  man,  is 
manifest  by  the  approbation  of  many  grave  authority.  Diodorus,  in  his  fifth 
book,  speaks  of  Hecate.  Hey wood.— History  of  JVomen,  London,  1624.  St. 
Augustine,  in  bis  CityoJ  God%  declared  that  women  are  more  prone  to  these  un- 
lawful acts,  for  so  we  read  of  Medea,  Cyrce  and  others.  Suidas,  speaking  of 
witches,  cites  an  old  proverb,  declaring  witchcraft  peculiar  to  woman  and  not  to 
man.  Quintillian,  referring  to  this  statement,  says:  Theft  is  more  common  with 
man,  but  witchcraft  with  woman. 

61  Idiots,  the  lame,  the  blind  and  the  dumb,  are  men  in  whom  devils  have 
established  themselves,  and  all  the  physicians  who  heal  these  infirmities  as 
though  they  preceded  from  natural  causes  are  ignorant  blockheads,  who  know 
nothing  about  the  power  of  the  demons. — Tishreden,  p.  202. 


262  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

his  low  estimate  of  woman  that  he  regarded  his  own 
wife  as  too  sinful  to  conduct  family  prayers,  although 
to  Susannah,  equally  with  John,  is  Methodism  indebted 
for  its  existence.  In  Great  Britain,  the  rapid  increase 
of  belief  in  witchcraft  after  the  reformation  was 
especially  noticeable.  The  act  of  Parliament  which 
declared  witchcraft  to  be  felony;  confirmed  under 
Henry  VIII.  was  again  confirmed  under  Elizabeth. 
In  England  the  reformation  brought  with  it  great  in- 
crease of  tyranny  both  civil  and  ecclesiastical.  Under 
Henry  VIII.  many  new  treasons  were  created.  This 
king  who  sent  the  largest  proportion  of  his  six  wives 
to  the  headsman's  block,  who  neither  hesitated  at  in- 
cest or  at  casting  the  taint  of  illegitimacy  upon  the 
daughter  who  succeeded  him  upon  the  throne,  could 
not  be  expected  to  show  justice  or  mercy  to  subject 
women.  The  penal  laws  of  even  celibate  Elizabeth 
were  largely  the  result  of  the  change  in  religion  of 
the  realm.62  The  queen,  absolute  in  Church  as  in 
State,  who  "bent  priest  and  prelate  to  her  fiery  will," 
caused  the  laws  to  bear  with  equal  severity  upon  protest- 
ant  and  catholic.  Under  her  "A  Statute  of  Uniformity 
for  abolishing  Diversity  of  Opinions,"  was  enacted,  and 
the  clergy  were  continued  in  the  enjoyment  of  secular 
power.  Women  received  no  favor.  The  restrictions  of 
the  catholic  church  in  regard  to  the  residence  of  a  priest's 
mother  or  sister  in  his  house  were  now  extended  to  the 
laity.  No  man  was  permitted  to  give  his  widowed 
mother  or  orphan  sister  a  home  in  his  house  without 
permission  from  the  authorities,  and  then  but  for  a  lim- 
ited time.  Single  women  were  allowed  no  control  over 
their  own  actions.  Twelve  years  was  the  legal  marriage- 
able age  for  a  girl,  after  which  period  if  still  unmarried 

62    See  Reeves,  and  Hume. 


WITCHCRAFT  263 

she  could  be  bound  out  at  the  option  of  the  court/8 
Nor  did  the  Cromwellian  period  lessen  woman's  perse- 
cution. The  number  of  witches  executed  under  the 
Presbyterian  domination  of  the  Long  Parliament  accord- 
ing to  a  list"  that  has  been  preserved,  amounted  to  be- 
tween three  and  four  thousand  persons.  The  legal  pro- 
fession no  less  than  the  clerical  asserted  its  belief  in 
witchcraft,  referring  to  the  Bible  in  confirmation.  Black- 
stone  said: 

"To  deny  the  possibility,  nay  the  actual  existence  of 
witchcraft  and  sorcery  is  at  once  flatly  to  contradict  the 
revealed  word  of  God,  in  various  passages  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testament;  and  the  thing  itself  is  a  truth  to 
which  every  nation  in  the  world  hath  in  its  turn  borne 
testimony,  either  by  examples  seemingly  well  attested, 
or  by  prohibiting  laws." 

The  protestant  clergy  equally  with  the  catholic  priest- 
hood, were  charged  with  fostering  a  belief  in  witchcraft 
for  the  purpose  of  gain.  At  no  period  of  the  world  has 
a  more  diabolical  system  of  robbery  existed.  For  the 
sake  of  a  few  pounds  or  pence,  the  most  helpless  of 
human  beings,  made  helpless  through  church  teaching 
as  to  their  unworthiness,  were  by  the  church  daily 
brought  under  accusation,  exposing  them  to  a  cruel  death 
at  the  hand  of  irresponsible  tyranny.  The  system  of 
thugery  in  India,  shines  white  by  side  of  this  christian 
system  of  robbery,  inaugurated  by  the  church  and  sus- 
tained by  the  state.  In  the  name  of  religion,  the  worst 
crimes  against  humanity  have  ever  been  perpetrated. 
On  the  accession  of  James  I. he  ordered  the  learned  work 
of    Reginald    Scott   against   witchcraft,    to   be  burned.66 

63.  The  Statute  of  Labourers  (5  Eliz.  c.  4)  enacted  that  unmarried  women 
between  twelve  and  forty  years  old  may  be  appointed  by  two  justices  to  serve  by 
the  ye~\r,  week,  or  day,  for  such  wages  and  in  such  reasonable  sort  and  manneras 
they  shall  think  meet.—  Reeves  3,  591-8. 

64.  Seen  by  Dr.  Gray. 

65.  James  believing  in  their  (witches)  influence,  and  Bacon  partly  sharing  in 


264  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

This  was  in  accordance  with  the  act  of  Parliament  1605 
-9  which  ratified  a  belief  in  witchcraft  in  the  three  king- 
doms. At  this  date  the  tragedy  of  Macbeth  appeared, 
deeply  tinged  with  the  belief  of  the  times.  A  few  per- 
sons maintaining  possession  of  their  senses,  recognized 
the  fact  that  fear,  apprehension  and  melancholy  gave 
birth  to  the  wildest  self-delusions;  medical  experience 
recording  many  instances  of  this  character.  In  an  age 
when  ignorance  and  superstition  prevailed  among  the 
people  at  large,  while  vice,  ignorance,  and  cupidity  were 
in  equal  force  among  those  in  power,  the  strangest  be- 
liefs became  prevalent. 

Sir  George  Mackenzie,  the  eminent  king's  advocate  of 
Scotland,  conducting  many  trials  for  witchcraft,  became 
convinced  it  was  largely  a  subject  of  fear  and  delusion. 
He  said: 

Those  poor  persons  who  are  ordinarily  accused  of  this 
crime  are  poor  ignorant  creatures,  and  ofttimes  women 
who  understood  not  the  nature  of  what  they  are  accused 
of,  and  many  mistake  their  own  fears  and  apprehensions 
for  witchcraft,  of  which  I  shall  give  you  two  instances; 
one  of  a  poor  man,  who  after  he  had  confessed  witch- 
craft being  asked  how  he  saw  the  devil,  he  answered 
"like  flies  dancing  about  a  candle. "  Another  of  a  woman 
who  asked  sincerely;  when  accused,  "if  a  woman  might 
be  a  witch  and  not  know  it?"  And  it  is  dangerous  then. 
Those  who  of  all  others  are  the  most  simple  should  be 
tried  for  a  crime  which  of  all  others  is  the  most  myste- 
rious. Those  poor  creatures  when  defamed  became  so 
confused  with  fear  and  the  close  prison  in  which  they 
were  kept,  and  so  starved  for  want  of  meals  and  sleep 
(either  of  which  wants  is  enough  to  destroy  the  strongest 
reason),  when  men  are  confounded  with  fear  and  ap- 
prehension they  will  imagine  things  very  ridiculous  and 

the  belief.  Macbeth  appeared  in  this  year  mixed  up  with  Bacon's  inquiries  into 
witchcraft.  Ignatius  Donnelly. —  The  Cryptogram.  From  the  accession  of  James 
I.,  witchcraft  became  the  master  superstition  of  the  age.  The  woman  accused  of 
witchcraft  was  practically  beyond  the  pale  of  the  law;  the  mere  fact  of  accusation 
was  equal  to  condemnation. 


WITCHCRAFT  265 

absurd.  Melancholy  often  makes  men  imagine  they  are 
horses.  Most  of  these  poor  creatures  are  tortured  by 
their  keepers  who  are  persuaded  they  do  God  good  ser- 
vice. Most  of  all  that  were  taken  were  tortured  in  this 
manner  and  this  usage  was  the  ground  of  their  com- 
plaints. 

To  such  an  extent  was  this  persecution  carried  even 
in  protestant  Scotland  that  accused  women  sometimes 
admitted  their  guilt  that  they  might  die  and  thus 
escape  from  a  world  where  even  if  cleared,  they  would 
ever  after  be  looked  upon  with  suspicion.  Sir  George 
Mackenzie  visiting  some  women  who  had  confessed, 
one  of  them  told  him  "under  secrecie"  that: 

She  had  not  confessed  because  she  was  guilty  but 
being  a  poor  creature  who  wrought  for  her  meat  and 
being  defined  for  a  witch,  she  knew  she  would  starve, 
for  no  person  thereafter  would  give  her  either  meat  or 
lodging,  and  that  all  men  would  beat  her  and  hound 
dogs  at  her  and  therefore  she  desired  to  be  out  of  the 
world,  whereupon  she  wept  bitterly  and  upon  her 
knees  called  upon  God  to  witness  what  she  said. 

Even  under  all  the  evidence  of  the  persecution  and 
cruel  tortures  that  innocent  women  endured  during  the 
witchcraft  period,  no  effort  of  the  imagination  can 
portray  the  sufferings  of  an  accused  woman.  The 
death  this  poor  woman  chose,  in  voluntarily  admit- 
ting a  crime  of  which  she  was  innocent,  rather  than  to 
accept  a  chance  of  life  with  the  name  of  "witch" 
clinging  to  her,  was  one  of  the  most  painful  of  which 
we  can  conceive,  although  in  the  diversity  of  torture 
inflicted  upon  the  witch  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  say 
which  one  was  the  least  agonizing.  In  no  country 
has  the  devil  ever  been  more  fully  regarded  as  a  real 
personage,  ever  on  the  watch  for  souls,  than  in  Chris- 
tian Scotland.      Sir  George  says  : 

Another  told    me    she   was   afraid    the  devil  would 


266  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

challenge  a  right  to  her  soul  as  the  minister  said 
when  he  desired  her  to  confess;  and  therefore  she 
desired  to  die.64 

The  following  is  an  account  of  the  material  used 
and  the  expenses  attending  the  execution  of  two  witches 
in  Scotland. 

For  10  loads  of  coal  to  burn  the  witches ^3  06.8 

"  A  tar  barrel o  14.0 

"  towes o  06.  o 

"  hurdles  to  be  jumps  for  them 3  10. o 

"  making  of  them o  08.0 

11  one  to   go  to  Tinmouth   for   the  lord   to  sit 

upon  the  assize  as  judge o  06.0 

"  the  executioner  for  his  pains 8  14. o 

"  his  expenses  there o  16.4 

What  was  the  special  office  of  the  executioner  does 
not  appear;  whether  to  drag  the  victims  upon 
hurdles,  to  the  places  of  burning,  to  light  the 
fire,  to  keep  it  well  blazing,  is  not  mention- 
ed although  his  office  was  important  and  a  well  paid 
one;  eight  pounds  and  fourteen  shillings  above  his 
expenses,  sixteen  shillings  and  four  pence  more;  in 
all  nine  pounds,  ten  shillings  and  four  pence,  a  sum 
equal  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  or  two  hundred  dollars 
of  the  present  day.  At  these  rates  it  was  easy  to  find 
men  for  the  purpose  desired.  It  is  worthy  of  note 
that  under  the  frequency  of  torture  the  payment  lessen- 
ed. Strange  experiences  sometimes  befell  those  who 
were  tortured:  a  cataleptic  or  hypnotic  state  coming 
on  amid  their  most  cruel  sufferings  causing  an  entire 
insensibility  to  pain.  To  the  church  this  condition 
was  sure  evidence  of  help  from  Satan  and  caused  a 
renewal  of  torture  as  soon  as  sensibility  return- 
ed. 

In  the  year    1639  a  poor  widow  called  Lucken,  who 

66.  Laws  and  Customs  of  Scotland,  2;  56. 


WITCHCRAFT  .  267 

was  accused  of  being  a  witch  and  sentenced  to  the  rack  at 
Helmstadt  having  been  cruelly  tortured  by  the  screw, 
was  seized  with  convulsions,  spoke  high  German  and  a 
strange  language  and  then  fell  asleep  on  the  rack  and 
appeared  to  be  dead.  The  circumstance  related  to  the 
juricounsul  at  Helmstadt  she  was  ordered  to  be  again 
submitted  to  the  torture.  Then  protesting  she  was  a 
good  Christian  while  the  executioner  stretched  her 
on  the  rack,  whipt  her  with  rods  and  sprinkled  her 
with  burning  brimstone,  she  fell  again  fast  asleep  and 
could  not  by  any  means  be  awakened.87 

Boiling  heretics  and  malefactors  alive,  commonly  in 
oil  but  occasionally  in  water,  was  practiced  through- 
out Europe  until  a  comparatively  late  period.  In  fact 
as  a  civil  punishment  in  England  it  dates  only  to  1531 
under  Henry  VII.  The  "Chronicle  of  the  Gray 
Friars"  mentioned  a  man  let  down  by  a  chain  into  a 
kettle  of  hot  water  until  dead.  We  have  expense 
items  of  this  form  of  torture,  in  the  boiling  of  Friar 
Stone  of  Canterbury. 

Paid    two   men  that  sat  by  the  kettle  and  boiled 
him is 

To    three  men  that    carried    his  quarters  to   the 
gate  and  set  them     up is 

For  a  woman  that  scoured  the  kettle 2d 

Boiling  was  a  form  of  torture  frequently  used  for 
women.  The  official  records  of  Paris  show  the  price  paid 
for  torture  in  France  was  larger  than  in  England;  boiling 
in  oil  in  the  former  country  costing  iorty  eight  francs 
as  against  one  shilling  in  the  latter.  It  must  be  re- 
membered these  official  prices  for  torture,  are  not 
taken  from  the  records  of  China  or  Persia,  two  thou- 
sand years  ago,  nor  from  among  the  savages  of  Pata- 
gonia, Australia  or  Guinea,  but  two  European  countries 

67.     The  Seer  ess  of  Prevotst. 


268  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  highest  Christian  civilization  within  the  last  three 
hundred  years. 

The  following  list  of  prices  for  dealing  with  crimi- 
nals  is  taken  from  the  official  records  in  Paris: 

For  boiling  a  criminal  in  oil,  francs 48 

For   tearing   a  living  man    in    four   quarters   with 

horses 30 

Execution  with  the  sword 20 

Breaking  on  the  wheel 10 

Mounting  the  head  on  a  pole 10 

Quartering  a  man 36 

Hanging  a  man 29 

Burying  a   man 2 

Impaling  a  man  alive 14 

Burning  a  witch  alive ' 28 

Flaying  a   man  alive 28 

Drowning  an  infanticide  in  a  sack 24 

Throwing  a  suicide's  body  among  the  offal 20 

Putting  to  the  torture 4 

For  applying  the  thumb-screw 2 

For  applying  the  boot 4 

Torture  by  fire 10 

Putting  a  man  in  the  pillory 2 

Whipping  a  man 4 

Branding  with  a  red-hot  iron 10 

Cutting  off  the  tongue,  the  ears  and  the  nose 10 

Burning  a  witch,  probably  because  of  its  greater  fre- 
quency, cost  but  little  over  one-half  as  much  as  boiling 
in  oil.  The  battle  of  gladiators  with  wild  beasts  in  the 
Coliseum  at  Rome  in  reign  of  Nero,  had  in  it  an 
element  of  hope.  Not  the  priesthood  but  the  popu- 
lace were  the  arbiters  of  the  gladiator's  destiny,  giving 
always  a  chance  for  life  in  cases  of  great  personal 
bravery.  But  in  France  and  England  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal code  was  so  closely  united  with  the  civil  as  to  be 
one  with  it;  compassion  equally  with  justice  was  for- 
gotten, despair  taking  their  place.  Implements  of  tor- 
ture were    of  frequent   invention,  the  thought  of    the 


WITCHCRAFT  26g 

age  turning  in  the  direction  of  human  suffering,  new 
methods  were  continually  devised.  Many  of  these 
instruments  are  now  on  exhibition  in  foreign  museums. 
One  called  "The  Spider"  a  diabolical  iron  machine 
with  curved  claws,  for  tearing  out  a  woman's  breasts 
was  shown  in  the  United  States  but  a  few  years  since. 
In  Protestant  Calvinistic  Scotland,  where  hatred  of 
"popery"  was  most  pronounced,  the  persecution  of 
witches  raged  with  the  greatest  violence,  and  multi- 
tudes of  women  died  shrieking  to  heaven  for  that 
mercy  denied  them  by  Christian  men  upon  earth.  It 
was  in  Scotland  after  the  reformation  that  the  most 
atrocious  tortures  for  the  witch  were  invented,  one  of 
most  diabolical  being  known  as  "the  Witches'  Bridle." 
By  means  of  a  loop  passed  about  the  head,  this  instru- 
ment of  four  iron  prongs  was  fastened  in  the  mouth. 
One  of  the  prongs  pressed  down  the  tongue,  one 
touched  the  palate,  the  other  two  doing  their  barbar- 
ous work  upon  the  inner  side  of  the  cheeks.  As  this 
instrument  prevented  speech  thus  allowing  no  com- 
plaint upon  the  part  of  the  victim,  it  was  preferred  to 
many  other  methods   of   torture.88     The  woman    upon 

68.  Iron  collars,  or  Witches'  Bridles,  are  still  preserved  in  various  parts  of 
Scotland,  which  had  been  used  for  such  iniquitous  purposes.  These  instruments 
were  so  constructed  that  by  means  of  a  loon  which  passed  over  the  head,  a  piece 
of  iron  having  four  points  or  prongs,  was  forci  bly  thrust  into  the  mouth,  two  o 
these  being  directed  to  the  tongue  and  palate,  the  others  pointing  outward  to  each 
cheek.  This  infernal  machine  was  secured  by  a  padlock.  At  the  back  of  the 
collar  was  fixed  a  ring,  by  which  to  attach  the  witch  to  a  staple  in  the  wall  of  her 
cell.  Thus  equipped,  and  day  and  night  waked  and  watched  by  some  skillful 
person  appointed  by  her  inquisitors;  the  unhappy  creature,  after  a  few  days  of 
such  discipline,  maddened  by  the  misery  of  her  forlorn  and  helpless  state,  would 
be  rendered  fit  for  confessing  anything  in  order  to  be  rid  of  the  dregs  of  her 
life.  At  intervals  fresh  examinations  took  place,  and  they  were  repeated  from 
time  to  time  until  her  "contumacy,"  as  it  was  termed,  was  subdued.  The  clergy 
and  Kirk  Sessions  appear  to  have  been  the  unwearied  instruments  of  "purging 
the  land  of  witchcraft,"  and  to  them,  in  the  first  instance,  all  the  complaints  and 
informations  were  made. — Pitcairn,  Vol.  I.,  Part  2,  p.  50. 

"Who  has  not  heard  of  the  Langholm  witches,  and  'the  branks' to  subdue 
them?    This  was  a  simple  instrument  formed  so  as  to  fit  firmly  on  the  head,  and 


270  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

whom  it  was  used  was  suspended  against  a  wall  by  a 
loop  at  the  back,  barely  touching  the  floor  with  her 
toes.  The  iron  band  around  her  neck  rendered  her 
powerless  to  move,  she  was  unable  to  speak  or  scarcely 
to  breathe.  Every  muscle  was  strained  in  order  to 
sustain  herself  and  prevent  entire  suffocation,  the  least 
movement  causing  cruel  wounds  by  means  of  the  prongs 
in  her  mouth. 

The  victims  were  mostly  aged  women  who  having 
reared  a  family,  spending  their  youth  and  beauty  in  this 
self-denying  work,  had  lived  until  time  threading  their 
hair  with  silver  had  also  robbed  cheek  and  lip  of  their 
rosy  hue,  dimmed  the  brilliancy  of  the  eye  and  left 
wrinkles  in  place  of  youthful  dimples.  Such  victims 
were  left  for  hours,  until  the  malignity  of  their  perse- 
cutors was  satisfied,  or  until  death  after  long  torture 
released  them  from  a  world  where  under  the  laws  of 
both  Church  and  State  they  found  their  sex  to  be  a 
crime.  Old  women  for  no  other  reason  than  that  they 
were  old,  were  held  to  be  the  most  susceptible  to  the 
assaults  of  the  devil,  and  the  persons  most  especially 
endowed  with  supernatural  powers  for  evil.  Black- 
stone  refers  to  this  persecution  of  aged  women  in  his 
reference  to  a  statute  of  the  Eight  Henry.69  We  dis- 
cover a  reason  for  this  intense  hatred  of  old  women  in 
the  fact  that  woman  has  chiefly  been  looked  upon   from 

to  project  into  the  mouth  a  sharp  spike  for  subjugating  the  tongue.  It  was  much 
preferred  to  the  ducking-stool,  'which  not  only  endangered  the  health  of  the 
patient,  but  also  gave  the  tongue  liberty  betwixt  every  dip!'  Scores  of  these 
'patients'  were  burned  alongside  Langholm  castle;  and  the  spot  is  fully  as  inter- 
esting as  our  own  reminder  of  the  gentle  days,  Gallows  Hill,  at  Salem." 

69.  By  statute  33  of  Henry  VIII.,  C  8,  all  witchcraft  and  sorcery  was  to  be 
felony  without  benefit  of  clergy.  This  act  continued  in  force  till  lately  to  the 
terror  of  all  ancient  females  in  the  kingdom. — Commentaries.  As  bad  as  the 
Georges  are  depicted,  thanks  are  due  to  two  of  them  from  women.  By  statute  of 
George  II.,  C.  5,  no  future  prosecution  was  to  be  carried  on  against  any  person 
for  conjuration,  witchcraft,  sorcery  or  enchantment. 


WITCHCRAFT  27 I 

a  sensual  view  by  christian  men,  the  church  teaching 
that  she  was  created  solely  for  man's  sensual  use.  Thus 
when  by  reason  of  declining  years  she  no  longer 
attracted  the  sensual  admiration  of  man,  he  regarded 
her  as  having  forfeited  all  right  to  life.  England's  most 
learned  judge,  Sir  Mathew  Hale,  declared  his  belief  in 
the  agency  of  the  devil  in  producing  diseases  through 
the  aid  of  old  women.  The  prosecution  against  this 
class  raged  with  unusual  violence  in  Scotland  under 
the  covenanters. 

To  deny  the  existence  of  especially  evil  supernat- 
ural powers,  in  old  women,  was  held  as  an  evidence 
of  skeptism  exposing  the  doubting  person  to  like  sus- 
picion. Great  numbers  of  women  were  put  to  death 
at  a  time;  so  common  indeed  was  the  sight  as  to 
cause  but  little  comment.  A  Scotch  traveler  casually 
mentioned  having  seen  nine  women  burning  together 
at  Bath  in  1664.  Knox  himself  suffered  a  woman  to 
be  burned  at  St.  Andrews,  whom  one  word  from  him 
would  have  saved.  Father  Tanner  speaks  of  "the 
multitude"  of  witches  who  were  daily  brought  under 
the  torture  that  was  constantly  practiced  by  the 
church. 

The  reformers  were  more  cruel  than  those  from 
whose  superstitious  teachings  they  professed  to  have 
escaped.  All  the  tortures  of  the  old  church  were  re- 
peated and  an  unusual  number  of  new  and  diabolical 
ones  invented  to  induce  confession.  Nor  were  these 
tortures  applied  to  the  suspected  witch  alone;  her 
young  and  tender  children  against  whom  no  accusa- 
tion has  been  brought,  were  sometimes  tortured  in  her 
presence  in  order  to  wring  confession  from  the  mother. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  a  woman 
accused    of   witchcraft  endured  the  most    intense   tor- 


272  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

ture,  constantly  asserting  her  innocence.  Failing  to 
secure  confession,  her  husband,  her  son,  and  finally 
her  young  daughter  of  seven  short  years  were  tortured 
in  her  presence,  the  latter  being  subjected  to  a 
species  of  thumb-screw  called  "the  pinniwinkies" 
which  brought  blood  from  under  the  finger  nails  with 
a  pain  terribly  severe.  When  these  were  applied  to 
the  baby  hands,  to  spare  her  innocent  child,  the 
mother  confessed  herself  a  witch ;  but  after  enduring 
all  the  agonies  of  torture  upon  herself  and  all  she  was 
made  to  suffer  in  the  persons  of  her  innocent  family, 
confession  having  been  obtained  through  this  diaboli- 
cal means,  she  was  still  condemned  to  the  flames,  un- 
dergoing death  at  the  stake  a  blazing  torch  of  fire, 
and  died  calling  upon  God  for  that  mercy  she  could 
not  find  at  the  hands  of  Christian  men.70     In   protest- 

70.  Towards  the  end  of  1593  there  was  trouble  in  the  family  of  the  Earl  of 
Orkney.  His  brother  laid  a  plot  to  murder  him,  and  was  said  to  have  sought  the 
help  of  a  notorious  witch  called  "Allison  Balfour."  No  evidence  could  be  found 
connecting  her  with  this  particular  offense  or  with  witchcraft  in  general,  but  it 
was  enough  in  these  matters  to  be  a  woman  and  to  be  accused.  She  swore  she 
was  innocent,  but  she  was  looked  upon  as  a  pagan  who  thus  aggravated  her  guilt. 
She  was  tortured  agair  and  again,  but  being  innocent  she  constantly  declared 
her  innocence.  Her  legs  were  put  into  the  Casctulars— an  iron  which  was  grad- 
ually heated  until  it  burned  into  the  flesh,  but  no  confession  could  be  wrung  from 
her.  The  Casctulars  having  utterly  failed  to  make  her  tell  a  lie,  "the  powers 
that  be,"  whom  Paul  tells  us  "are  of  God,"  tortured  her  husband,  her  son  and  her 
daughter,  a  little  child  of  only  seven  years.  The  "powers"  knew  the  tenderness 
and  love  of  a  wife  and  mother,  so  they  first  brought  her  husband  into  court  and 
placed  by  her  side.  He  was  placed  in  the  "long  irons,"  some  accursed  instru- 
ment. She  did  not  yield.  Then  her  son  was  tortured;  the  poor  boy's  legs  were 
set  in  "the  boot,"  the  iron  boot,  and  wedges  were  driven  in,  which  forced  home 
crushed  the  very  bone  and  marrow.  Fifty-seven  mallet  strokes  were  delivered 
upon  the  wedges,  yet  this  failed.  This  innocent  tortured  heroic  woman  would 
not  confess  to  a  lie.  So  last  of  all  her  baby  daughter  was  brought  in,  the  fair 
child  of  seven  short  years.  There  was  a  machine  called  the  pinniwinkies,  a  kind 
of  thumb  screw  which  brought  blood  from  under  the  finger  nails  with  a  pain  ter- 
ribly severe.  These  tortures  were  applied  to  the  baby  hands,  and  the  mother's 
fortitude  broke  down  and  she  would  admit  anything  they  wished.  She  confessed 
the  witchcraft.  So  tried  she  would  have  confessed  the  seven  deadly  sins,  but 
this  suffering  did  not  save  her  to  her  family.  She  was  burned  alive,  with  her 
last  suffering  breath  protesting  her  innocence.  This  account  is  perfectly  well 
authenticated  and  taken  from  the  official  report  of  the  proceedings.  Froude.— 
Short  Stories  on  Great  Subjects, 


WITCHCRAFT  273 

ant  Scotland  as  in  catholic  countries,  witchcraft  was 
under  control  of  the  clergy.  When  a  woman  fell  under 
suspicion  of  being  a  witch,  the  minister  denounced 
her  from  the  pulpit,  forbade  any  one  to  harbor  or 
shelter  her  and  exhorted  his  parishoners  to  give 
evidence  against  her.71  She  was  under  ban  similar  to 
the  excommunicate  of  the  catholic  church,  a  being 
outside  of  human  help  or  sympathy.  In  protestant  as 
in  catholic  countries  the  woman  accused  was  virtually 
dead.  She  was  excommunicated  from  humanity; 
designated  and  denounced  as  one  whom  all  must  shun, 
to  whom  no  one  must  give  food  or  lodging  or  speech 
or  shelter;  life  was  not  worth  the  living.  To  afford 
such  a  one  aid  was  to  hazard  accusation  as  a  confed- 
erate. The  first  complaint  was  made  to  the  clergy 
and  Kirk  Sessions.72 

Notwithstanding  two  hundred  years  of  such  experi- 
ence, when  by  an  act  of  parliament  in  1784,  the  burn- 
ing and  hanging  of  witches  was  abolished,  the  General 
Assembly  of  the  Calvinistic  church  of  Scotland  "con- 
fessed" this  act  "as  a  great  national  sin."  Not  only 
were  the  courts  and  the  church  alert  for  the  detection 
of  alleged  witches,  but  the  populace  persecuted  many 
to  death.73     Deserted  by    her    friends,    the    suspected 

71.  The  same  dark  superstition  shared  the  civil  councils  of  Scotland  as  late 
as  the  beginning  of  the  18th  century,  and  the  convictions  which  then  took  place 
are  chiefly  to  be  ascribed  to  the  ignorance  and  fanaticism  of  the  clergy. 

72.  Excommunication  was  both  of  temporal  and  spiritual  effect,  the  person 
under  ban  not  only  being  deprived  of  absolution,  extreme  unction,  consecrated 
burial,  etc  ,  but  all  persons  were  forbidden  to  deal  with  the  recalcitrant.  Under 
the  strictest  protestantism  in  Scotland,  the  clergy  held  almost  entire  control. 
When  a  woman  fell  under  suspicion  of  being  a  witch,  the  minister  denounced 
her  from  the  pulpit,  forbade  any  one  harboring  or  sheltering  her,  and  exhorted 
his  parishoners  to  give  evidence  against  her.  To  the  clergy  and  Kirk  Sessions 
were  the  first  complaints  made.  It  is  scarcely  more  than  150  years  since  the  last 
witch  was  burned  in  Scotland,  having  been  accused  of  raising  a  thunder  storm 
by  pulling  off  her  stockings. —  Witchcraft  Under  Protestantism. 

73.  Many  witches  lost  their  lives  in  every  part  of  England,  without  being 
"brought  to  trial  at  all,  from  injuries  received  at  the  hands  of  the  populace. 
Mackay. — Memoirs  of  Extraordinary  Popular  Delusions. 


274  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

witch  was  beaten,  worried  by  dogs,  denied  food  and 
prevented  from  sleeping.74  Contrary  to  equity  and 
the  principles  of  modern  law,  the  church  sought  in 
every  way  to  entrap  victims  into  giving  evidence 
against  themselves.  Once  a  person  was  accused,  no 
effort  was  spared  to  induce  confession.  Holding  con- 
trol over  the  soul  as  well  as  the  body,  enquiry  into 
these  crimes  was  pushed  by  every  method  that  hu- 
man ingenuity  could  devise.  The  kirk  became  the 
stronghold  of  superstition;  both  rewards  and  punish- 
ments were  used  as  inducements  towards  ferreting  out 
witches.  All  ties  of  natural  affection  were  ignored, 
the  kirk  preaching  it  to  be  a  matter  of  greater  duty 
to  inform  against  one's  nearest  relatives  than  against 
strangers.  Unlike  the  theory  of  Roman  civil  law 
which  held  the  accused  innocent  until  proven  guilty, 
ecclesiastical  law  everywhere  produced  a  condition 
under  which  the  accused  was  held  guilty  from  the 
moment  of  accusation.  During  the  witchcraft  period 
the  minds  of  people  were  trained  in  a  single  direction. 
The  chief  lesson  of  the  church  that  betrayal  of  friends 
was  necessary  to  one's  own  salvation,  created  an  in- 
tense selfishness.  All  humanitarian  feeling  was  lost  in 
the  effort  to  secure  heaven  at  the  expense  of  others, 
even  those  most  closely  bound  by  ties  of  nature  and 
affection.  Mercy,  tenderness,  compassion  were  all 
obliterated.  Truthfulness  escaped  from  the  Christian 
world;  fear,  sorrow  and  cruelty  reigned  pre-eminent. 
All  regard  that  existed  for  others  grew  up  outside  of 
church  teaching  and  was  shown  at  the  hazard    of  life. 

74.  One  of  the  most  powerful  incentives  to  confession  was  to  systematically 
deprive  the  suspected  witch  of  her  natural  sleep.  It  was  said  who  but  witches 
can  be  present  and  so  witness  of  the  doings  of  witches,  since  all  their  meetings 
and  conspiracies  are  the  habits  of  darkness. V'The  voluntarie  conftssion  of  a  witch 
doth  exceede  all  other  evidence.  How  long  she  has  been  a  witch  the  devil  and 
she  knows  best," 


WITCHCRAFT  275 

Contempt  and  hatred  of  woman  was  inculcated  with 
greater  intensity;  love  of  power  and  treachery  were 
parts  of  the  selfish  lessons  of  the  church.  All  rever- 
ence for  length  of  years  was  lost.  The  sorrows  and 
sufferings  of  a  long  life  appealed  to  no  sympathetic 
cord  in  the  heart.  Instead  of  the  tenderness  and  care 
due  to  aged  women,  they  were  so  frequently  accused 
of  witchcraft  that  for  years  it  was  an  unusual  thing 
for  an  old  woman  in  the  north  of  Europe  to  die  in  her 
bed.  Besides  the  thousands  of  accused  who  committed 
suicide  in  order  to  escape  the  horrors  incident  upon 
trial,  many  others  tired  of  life  amid  so  much  humilia- 
tion and  suffering,  falsely  accused  themselves,  prefer- 
ring a  death  bv  the  torture  of  fire  to  a  life  of  endless 
isolation  and  persecution.  An  English  woman  on  her 
way  to  the  stake,  with  a  greatness  of  soul  born  of  de- 
spair, freed  her  judges  from  responsibility,  by  saying 
to  the  people,  "Do  not  blame  my  judges.  I  wished  to 
put  an  end  to  my  own  self.  My  parents  keep  aloof 
from  me;  my  own  husband  has  denied  me.  I  could 
not  live  on  without  disgrace.  I  longed  for  death  and 
so  I  told  a  lie."  The  most  eminent  legal  minds  be- 
came incompetent  to  form  correct  judgment.  Having 
received  the  church  as  of  divine  origin,  and  its  priest- 
hood as  the  representatives  of  the  divinity,  they  were 
no  longer  capable  of  justice.  Old  and  ignorant  wo- 
men upon  the  most  frivolous  testimony  of  young 
children  were  condemned  to  death.  One  of  the  most 
notable  examples  of  the  power  of  superstitious  belief  to 
darken  the  understanding,  is  that  of  Sir  Mathew 
Hale,  living  in  the  seventeenth  century.  He  was 
spoken  of  by  his  contemporaries  as  one  of  the  most 
eminent  jurists  of  the  world,  whose  integrity,  learn- 
ing and  knowledge  of   law    were    scarcely  to  be  paral- 


276  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

leled  in  any  age,  and  yet  he  became  so  entirely  con- 
vinced of  the  diabolism  of  two  women  as  to  condemn 
them  to  death  while  sitting  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds, 
without  even  summing  up  the  evidence.  The  learned 
and  famous  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  who  was  present,  co- 
incided in  the  justice  of  this  decision,  although  but  a 
short  time  previously  he  had  published  a  work  against 
superstition.  The  testimony  upon  which  these  women 
were  condemned  was  of  the  most  petty  and  worthless 
character,  yet  among  all  the  persons  present  at  the 
trial,  but  one  or  two  seemed  inclined  to  doubt  the 
sufficiency  of  the  evidence. 

The  records  of  this  remarkable  trial  were  preserved 
to  the  world  by  a  gentleman  who  privately  took  a 
report  for  his  own  use,  which  was  published  in  pam- 
phlet form  a  number  of  years  afterwards.  This  ex- 
tremely rare  book  is  not  to  be  found  even  in  the  Con- 
gressional Library  at  Washington,  but  the  Supreme 
Court  Library  owns  a  copy  from  which  this  report  is 
taken: 

Trial  March  10,  1664  by  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  Knight, 
Lord  Chief  Baron  of  his  Majesty's  Court  of  Excheq- 
uer held  before  a  judge  who  for  his  integrity,  learn- 
ing and  wisdom  hardly  any  age  before  or  since  could 
parallel;  he  not  only  took  a  great  deal  of  pains  and 
spent  much  time  in  this  trial  himself,  but  had  the 
assistance  and  opinion  of  several  other  very  eminent 
and  learned  persons;  so  that  this  was  the  most  per- 
fect narrative  of  anything  of  this  nature  hitherto  ex- 
tant. 

The  persons  tried  were  Ann  Durant,  or  Drury,  Susan 
Chander,  Elizabeth  Pacy.  The  celebrated  Dr.  Brown 
of  Norwich  who  had  written  a  work  against  witchcraft, 
was  present  and  after  hearing  the  evidence  expressed 
himself  as  clearly  of  the  opinion  the  persons  were 
bewitched,  and  said  in  Denmark  lately  there  had  been 


WITCHCRAFT  277 

a  great  discovery  of  witches  who  used  the  same  way 
of  afflicting  persons  by  the  agency  of  pins.  This  trial 
took  place  in  the  sixteenth  year  of  Charles  II.  The 
witnesses  were  two  children  of  eleven  and  nine  years 
who  fell  into  fits,  vomiting  pins  and  nails.  Sargeant 
Keeling  asserted  deception  on  part  of  the  witnesses. 
The  Court  appointed  Lord  Cornwallis,  Sir  Edmund 
Bacon  and  Sargeant  Keeling  as  committee  to  examine 
the  girl  alone,  when  they  became  fully  satisfied  of  her 
imposture  but  without  convincing  the  learned  judge 
who  contrary  to  all  justice  and  law  did  not  sum  up 
the  evidence,  but  gave  the  great  weight  of  his  opinion 
in  favor  of  their  guilt  saying:  "That  there  are  such 
creatures  as  witches,  I  have  no  doubt  at  all.  For 
First,  Scripture  has  offered  so  much.  Second,  the 
wisdom  of  all  nations  has  propounded  laws  against 
such  persons,  which  is  an  argument  of  their  confidence 
of  such  a  crime.  And  such  has  been  the  judgment  of 
this  kingdom  as  appears  by  that  Act  of  Parliament 
which  hath  provided  punishments  proportionate  to 
the  guilt  of  this  offense,  and  desired  them  strictly  to 
observe  the  evidence;  and  desired  the  great  God  of 
Heaven  to  direct  their  hearts  in  the  weighty  things 
they  had  so  heard.  For  to  condemn  the  innocent  and 
to  let  the  guilty  go  free,  were  both  an  abomination 
to  the  Lord.  Within  half  an  hour  the  jury  returned 
a  verdict  of  guilty  on  thirtern  counts.  The  judge 
and  all  the  court  were  fully  satisfied  with  the  verdict 
and  therefore  gave  judgment  against  the  witches  that 
they  should  be  hanged. 

The  evidence  was  of  the  most  paltry  character;  as 
when  out  of  door  a  little  thing  like  a  bee  flew  upon 
the  witness  face,  putting  a  ten  penny  nail  with  a 
broad  head  into  her  mouth.  Lath  nails  and  pins  said 
to  have  been  vomited  by  the  children  were  produced 
in  court.  When  arraigned  the  accused  pleaded  not 
guilty  nor  did  they  ever  change  this  plea.  Great  pres- 
sure was  upon  them  to  induce  confession,  but  they 
could  not  be  prevailed  upon  to  thus  criminate  them- 
selves and  were  executed  the  seventeenth  of  March, 
just  one  week  after  trial,  confessing  nothing. 


278  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

This  trial  is  the  more  remarkable  that  confessions 
usually  deemed  the  best  of  evidence,  were  not  ob- 
tained, these  poor  illiterate,  persecuted  women  braving 
all  the  learning  of  the  great  judge  and  power  of  the 
kingdom  in  maintaining  to  the  last  the  assertion  of 
their  innocence.  The  minutes  of  this  trial  were  taken 
by  a  gentleman  in  attendance  upon  the  court  and  were 
not  published  until  1716  when  the  record  fell  into  the 
hands  of  a  person  who  saw  its  value  "so  that,"  he 
says,  being  the  most  complete  minutes  of  anything 
of  this  nature  hitherto  extant,  made  me  unwilling  to 
deprive  the  world  of  it;  which  is  the  sole  motive  that 
induced  me  to  publish  it." 

Not  alone  the  clergy  and  the  legal  fraternity  wrought 
in  unison,  but  the  medical  as  well,  gave  the  weight 
of  their  authority  in  favor  of  witchcraft;  and  many 
persons  needing  the  wisest  medical  appliance  for 
their  relief  from  disease  were  executed  as  witches. 
Half-witted  and  insane  persons  met  with  the  same 
persecution  as  old  women.  It  was  an  era  of  the  strong 
against  the  weak,  the  powerful  against  the  helpless. 
Even  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  himself  a  physician,  re- 
garded the  fainting  fits  to  which  one  of  the  accused 
women  had  long  been  subject  as  fuller  evidence  of 
her  guilt.  In  his  character  of  medical  examiner  he 
asserted  that  the  devil  had  taken  opportunity  of  her 
natural  fits,  to  operate  with  her  malice. 

An  almost  equally  notable  trial  as  that  of  Bury  St. 
Edmunds  before  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  was  known  as  the 
Sommers  Trial,  or  that  of  the  "Lancashire  Witches," 
in  1612.  Among  the  accused  were  two  extremely  aged 
women  decrepit  and  nearly  blind,  tottering  into  second 
childhood,  incapable  of  understanding  whereof  they 
were  accused,  or  the  evidence  against  them  which,  as 
in  the  case  argued  before  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  was  of 
the  most  worthless  character.     One  needs  but  refer  to 


WITCHCRAFT  279 

the  records  in  order  to  learn  the  extreme  age,  igno- 
rance and  many  infirmities  of  these  women.  But  as 
was  the  case  in  Scotland,  these  weaknesses  were  used 
as  evidences  of  guilt.  The  feeble  mental  and  physical 
condition  of  "the  Lancashire  witches,"  their  great  age 
and  failing  power  were  used  as  evidence  for  their  con- 
demnation. From  published  accounts  of  this  trial, 
we  learn  that: 

This  Annie  Whittle,  alias  Chattox,  was  a  very  old 
withered  and  decrepit  creature,  her  sight  almost  gone, 
a  dangerous  witch  of  very  long  continuance,  her  lips 
ever  chattering  and  walking  (talking)?  but  no  one 
knew  what.  She  was  next  in  order  to  that  wicked, 
fierce  bird  of  mischief,  old  Demdike. 

This  poor  old  creature  "confessed"  that  Robert 
Mutter  had  offered  insult  to  her  married  daughter; 
and  the  court  decreed  this  was  a  fair  proof  of  her 
having  bewitched  him  to  his  death.  No  condemnation 
of  the  man  who  had  thus  insulted  her  daughter,  but 
death  for  the  aged  mother  who  had  resented  this  in- 
sult. Designated  as  "Old  Demdike,  a  fierce  bird  of 
mischief"  this  woman  of  four  score  years  of  age,  had 
not  only  brought  up  a  large  family  of  her  own,  but  her 
grand  children  had  fallen  to  her  care.  She  had  lived 
a  blameless  life  of  ovex  eighty  years,  much  of  it  de- 
voted to  the  care  of  children  and  children's  children. 
But  when  decrepit  and  almost  blind  she  fell  under 
suspicion  of  a  crime  held  by  Church  and  State  as  of 
the  most  baleful  character,  her  blameless  and  industri- 
ous life  proved  of  no  avail  against  this  accusation.  She 
seems  to  have  originally  been  a  woman  of  great  force 
of  character  and  executive  ability,  but  frightened  at 
an  accusation  she  could  not  understand  and  overpowered 
by  all  the  dread  majesty  of  the  law  into  whose  merci- 
less power  she  had  fallen,  she  "confessed"  to  commu- 


280  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

nion  with  a  demon  spirit  which  appeared  to  her  in  the 
form  of  a  brown  dog.75  From  a  work  entitled  The 
Sommers  Trials,  the  form    of  indictment  is  learned.70 

INDICTMENT. 

This  Annie  Whittle,  alias  Chattox,  of  the  Forest 
of  Pendle,  in  the  countie  of  Lancaster,  widow,  being 
indicted  for  that  she  feloniously  had  practiced,  used 
and  exercised  divers  wicked  and  divelish  artes,  called 
witchcraftes,  inchantments,  charms  and  sorceries,  in 
and  upon  one  Robert  Mutter  of  Greenhead,  in  the 
Forest  of  Pendle,  in  the  countie  of  Lane;  and  by 
force  of  the  same  witchcraft,  feloniously  the  sayed 
Robert  Mutter  had  killed,  contra  pacem,  etc.  Being 
at  the  barre  was  arraigned.  To  this  indictment,  upon 
her  arraignment,  she  pleaded,  not  guiltie;  and  for  the 
tryall  of  her  life  put  herself  upon  God  and  her  country. 

One  of  the  chief  witnesses  at  this  trial  was  a  child 
of  nine  years.77  Upon  seeing  her  own  daughter 
arraigned  against  her,  the  mother  broke  into  shrieks 
and  lamentations  pleading  with  the  girl  not  to  falsify 
the  truth  and  thus  condemn  her  own  mother  to  death. 
The  judges  instead  of  seeing  in  this  agony  a  proof  of 
the  mother's  innocence  looked  upon  it  as  an  attempt 
to  thwart  the  ends  of  justice  by  demoniac  influence, 
and  the  child  having  declared  that  she  could  not  con- 
fess in  her  mother's  presence,  the  latter  was  removed 
from  the  room,  and  as  under  the  Inquisition,  the  testi- 
mony was  given  in  the  absence  of  the  accused.  The 
child  then  said  that  her  mother  had  been  a  witch  for 
three  or  four  years,  the   devil    appearing  in    the  form 

75.  Among  the  Lancashire  witches  was  Old  Demedike,  four  score  years  old, 
who  had  been  a  witch  fifty  years,  and  confessed  to  possessing  a  demon  which 
appeared  to  her  in  the  form  of  a  brown  dog. — Sommer's  Trials. 

76.  Ibid. 

77.  Which  examination,  although  she  was  but  very  young,  yet  it  was  wonder 
ful  to  the  Court  in  so  great  a  presence  and  audience. — Ibid.  Ties  of  the  tenderest 
nature  did  not  restrain  the  inquisitors.  Young  girls  were  regarded  as  the  best 
witnesses  against  their  mothers,  and  the  oaths  of  children  of  irresponsible  age 
were  received  as  evidence  against  a  parent.— Superstition  and  Force,  p.  93. 


WITCHCRAFT  28 1 

of  a  brown  dog,  Bill.  These  trials  taking  place  in 
protestant  England,  two  hundred  years  after  the  re- 
formation, prove  the  worthless  nature  ot  witchcraft 
testimony,  as  well  as  the  superstition,  ignorance  and 
entire  unfitness  for  the  bench  of  those  men  called  the 
highest  judicial  minds  in  England.  The  church  hav- 
ing almost  entirely  destroyed  freedom  of  will  and  the 
expression  of  individual  thought,  men  came  to  look 
upon  authority  and  right  as  synonymous.  Works 
bearing  the  stamp  of  the  legal  fraternity  soon  appeared. 
In  1618  a  volume  entitled,  "The  County  Justice,"  by 
Michal  Dalton,  Gentleman  of  Lincoln  Inn,  was  pub- 
lished in  London,  its  chief  object  to  give  directions, 
based  upon  this  trial,  for  the  discovery  of  witches. 

Now  against  these  witches  the  justice  of  the  peace 
may  not  always  expect  direct  evidence,  seeing  all  their 
works  are  works  of  darkness  and  no  witness  permitted 
with  them  to  accuse  them,  and  therefore  for  their 
better  discovery  I  thought  good  here  to  set  down  cer- 
tain observations  out  of  the  methods  of  discovery  of 
the  witches,  that  were  arraigned  at  Lancaster,  A.  D. 
1612  before  Sir  James  Altham  and  Sir  Edward  Brom- 
ley, judges  of  Assize  there. 

1.  They  have  ordinarily  a  familiar  or  spirit  which 
appeareth  to  them. 

2.  The  said  familiar  hath  some  bigg  or  place  upon 
their  body  where  he  sucketh  them. 

3.  They  have  often  pictures  of  clay  or  wax  (like  a 
man,  etc.)  found  in  their  house. 

4.  If  the  dead  body  bleed  upon  the  witches  touch- 
ing it. 

5.  The  testimony  of  the  person  hurt  upon  his 
death. 

6.  The  examination  and  confession  of  the  children 
or  servants  of  the  witch. 

7.  Their  own  voluntary  confession  which  exceeds 
all  other  evidence. 

At  this  period  many  persons  either  in  hope  of  a  re- 


282  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

ward78  or  because  they  believed  they  were  thus  aid- 
ing the  cause  of  justice,  kept  private  note  books  of 
instruction  in  the  examination  of  witches,  and  new 
varieties  were  constantly  discovered.  When  witchcaft 
by  Act  of  Parliament  was  decreed  felony  this  statute 
gave  the  legal  fraternity  double  authority  for  a  belief 
in  its  existence.  Even  Sir  George  Mackenzie  although 
convinced  by  his  own  experience  that  many  persons 
were  wrongfully  accused  of  witchcraft,  still  declared 
that  its  existence  could  not  be  doubted,  "seeing  that 
our  law  ordains  it  to  be  punished  with  death."  The 
most  fatal  record  the  world  possesses  of  the  plague  is 
that  of  the  fourteenth  century,  known  as  the  "Black 
Death,"  when  whole  villages  were  depopulated  and 
more  than  half  the  inhabitants  of  Europe  were  de- 
stroyed. It  will  aid  in  forming  our  judgment  as  to  the 
extent  of  woman's  persecution  for  witchcraft,  to  re- 
member it  has  been  estimated  that  the  number  of  deaths 
from  this  cause  equalled  those  of  the  plague. 

The  American  Colonies  adopted  all  the  unjust  pre- 
visions of  European  Christianity  as  parts  of  their  own 
religion  and  government.  Fleeing  from  persecution, 
the  Puritans  yet  brought  with  them  the  spirit  of  per- 
secution in  the  belief  of  woman's  inferiority  and  wick- 
edness, as  taught  by  the  church  from  whence  they  had 
fled.  The  "Ducking  Stool"  for  women  who  too  vigor- 
ously protested  against  their  wrongs,  and  the  "Scarlet 
Letter''  of  shame  for  the  woman  who  had  transgressed 
the  moral  law,  her  companion  in  sin  going  free,  or 
as  in  England,  sitting  as  juror  in  the  box,  or  judge 
upon  the  bench.  With  them  also  came  a  belief  in 
witchcraft,  which    soon   caused    Massachusetts  Colony 

78.  When  a  reward  was  publicly  offered  there  seemed  to  be  no  end  of  finding 
witches,  and  many  kept  with  great  care  their  note  book  of  "Examination  of 
Witches,"  and  were  discovering  "hellish  kinds  of  them." 


WITCHCRAFT  283 

to  enact  a  law  ordering  suspected  women  to  be  stripped 
naked  their  bodies  to  be  carefully  examined  by  a  male 
"witch  pricker"  to  see  if  there  was  not  the  devil's 
mark  upon  them.  The  public  whipping  of  half  naked 
women  at  the  cart's  tail  for  the  crime  of  religious  free 
thought  soon  followed,  a  union  of  both  religious  and 
judicial  punishment;  together  with  banishment  of 
women  from  the  Colony  for  daring  to  preach  Christ  as 
they  understood  his  doctrines.  These  customs  more 
barbarous  than  those  of  the  savages  whose  home  they 
had  invaded,  were  the  pleasing  welcome  given  to  the 
pioneer  woman  settlers  of  America  by  the  husbands 
and  fathers,  judges  and  ministers  of  that  period,  with 
which  the  words  "Plymouth  Rock,"  "May  Flower" 
and  "Pilgrim  Fathers"  are  so  intimately  associated. 
The  same  persecution  of  aged  women  took  place  in 
New  England  as  in  old  England,  while  children  of 
even  more  tender  years  were  used  as  witnesses  against 
their  mothers  if  accused  of  witchcraft,  or  were  them- 
selves imprisoned  upon  like  suspicion.  The  village  of 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  is  indissolubly  connected  with 
witchcraft,  for  there  the  persecution  raged  most 
fiercely,  involving  its  best  women  in  ruin.  One  of  the 
oldest  buildings  still  extant  in  the  United  States  is 
"The  Witch  House"  of  that  place,  erected  in  1631, 
although  it  was  sixty  one  years  later  before  this  per- 
secution reached  its  height. 

A  terrible  summer  for  Salem  village  and  its  vicinity 
was  that  of  1692 — a  year  of  worse  than  pestilence  or 
famine.  Bridget  Bishop  was  hanged  in  June;  Sarah 
Good,  Sarah  Wilder,  Elizabeth  Howe,  Susanna  Martin 
and  Rebecca  Nurse  in  July;  George  Burroughs,  John 
Proctor,  George  Jacobs,  John  Willard  and  Martha 
Carrier  in  August;  MLrtha  Corey,  Mary  Easty,  Alice 
Parker,  Ann  Pudeator,    Margaret  Scott,  Wilmit  Reed, 


284  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Samuel  Wordwell,  and  Mary  Baker  in  September;  in 
which  last  month  Giles  Corey  eighty-one  years  of  age, 
was  pressed  to  death  under  a  board  loaded  with  heavy 
stones,  not  heavy  enough  however  to  crush  out  life 
until  a  day  or  two  of  lingering  torture  had  intervened. 
Sarah  Good's  daughter  Dorcas  beween  three  and  four 
years  old,  orphaned  by  her  mother's  execution,  was 
one  of  a  number  of  children  who  with  several  hundred 
other  persons  were  imprisoned  on  suspicion  of  witch- 
crafc;  many  of  these  sufferers  remained  in  a  wretched 
condition,  often  heavily  ironed  for  months,  some  up- 
wards of  a  year;  and  several  dying  during  this  time. 
A  child  of  seven,  Sarah  Carrier,  was  called  upon  to 
testify  as  witness  against  her  mother. 

Some  of  the  condemned,  especially  Rebecca  Nurse, 
Martha  Corey,  and  Mary  Easty,  were  aged  women  who 
had  led  unblemished  lives  and  were  conspicuous  for 
their  prudence,  their  charities  and  all  domestic  virtues.79 

So  extended  became  the  persecution  for  witchcraft 
that  the  king  was  at  last  aroused  to  the  necessity  of 
putting  a  stop  to  such  wholesale  massacre  of  his  sub- 
jects, issued  a  mandate  forbidding  the  putting  of  any 
more  persons  to  death  on  account  of  witchcraft.80 
A  remarkable  family  gathering  took  place  at  Salem, 
July  18,  1883,  of  two  hundred  persons  who  met  to 
celebrate  their  descent  from  Mrs.  Rebecca  Nurse,  who 
was  executed  as  a  witch  at  that  place  in  1692.  The 
character  and  life  of  Mrs.  Nurse  were  unimpeachable. 
She  was  a  woman  seventy  years  of  age,  the  mother  of 
eight  children,  a  church  member  of  unsullied  repu- 
tation and  devout  habit;  but  all  these  considerations 
did  not  prevent  her  accusation,  trial,  conviction  and 
death,  although  she  solemnly  asserted  her  innocence 
to  the  last.     A  reprieve   granted  by  the  governor    was 

79,  Salem  Witchcraft  i,  393-4;  2,  373. 

80.  I  seemed  to  have  stepped  back  to  Puritan  time,  when  an  old  gentleman 
said  to  me.  "I  am  descended  from  that  line  of  witches;  my  grandmother  and 
120  others  were  under  condemnation  of  death  at  New  Bedford,  when  an  order 
came  from  the  king  prohibiting  farther  executions.'1 


WITCHCRAFT  285 

withdrawn  through  the  influence  of  the  church,  and 
she  was  hung  by  the  neck  till  she  was  dead.  In  order 
to  give  her  body  burial,  her  sons  were  obliged  to  steal 
it  away  by  night,  depositing  it  in  a  secret  place  known 
but  to  the  family.  Forty  persons  at  the  hazard  of 
their  own  lives  testified  to  the  goodness  and  piety  of 
Mrs.  Nurse.  Their  names  were  inscribed  upon  the 
monument  erected  by  her  descendants,  in  1892,  to  her 
memory.81  The  Rev.  Cotton  Mather  and  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Parrish  are  indissolubly  connected  with  this 
period,  as  both  were  extremely  active  in  fomenting  a 
belief  in  witchcraft.  Richard  Baxter,  known  as  the 
"greatest  of  the  Puritans"  condemned  those  who  ex- 
pressed a  disbelief  in  witchcraft  as  "wicked  Sadducees." 
Increase  Mather,  president  of  Harvard  College,  was 
one  of  the  most  bitter  persecutors  of  witches  in  New 
England.  The  dangerous  spirit  of  a  religious  autoc- 
racy like  the  priesthood,  was  forcibly  shown  by  a 
paper  read  by  Rev.  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis,  a  few  years 
since,  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  in 
which  he  excused  the  act  of  stripping  women  naked 
in  order  to  search  for  a  witch  mark,  upon  the  ground 
of  its  being  a  judicial  one  by  commissioned  officers 
and  universally  practiced  in  Christendom. 

Boston  as  "The  Bloody  Town"  rivalled  Salem  in  its 
persecution  of  women  who  dared  express  thoughts 
upon  religious  matters  in  contradiction  to  the  Puri- 
tanic belief;  women  were  whipped  because  of  inde- 
pendent religious  belief,  New  England  showing  itself 
as  strenuous  for  "conformity"   of  religious  opinion   as 

81  Salem,  Mass.,  July  30,  1892. — The  200th  anniversary  of  the  hanging  of  Rebecca 
Nurse  of  Salem  village  for  witchcraft,  was  commemorated  in  Danvers  Centre, 
old  Salem  village,  by  the  Nurse  Monument  Association.  The  distinct  feature  of 
tb<s  occasion  was  the  dedication  of  a  granite  tablet  to  commemorate  the  courage 
of  forty  men  and  women,  who  at  the  risk  of  their  lives  gave  written  testimony  in 
fa*or  of  Rebecca  Nurse  in  1693. 


286  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Old  England  under  Queen  Elizabeth.  The  cruelties 
of  this  method  of  punishing  free  thought,  culminated 
in  the  Vagabond  Law  of  Massachusetts  Colony,  passed 
May  1661. 

The  first  ecclesiastical  convocation  in  America  was 
a  synod  especially  convened  to  sit  in  judgment  upon 
the  religious  views  of  Mistress  Anne  Hutchinson,  who 
demanded  that  the  same  rights  of  individual  judgment 
upon  religious  questions  should  be  accorded  to  woman 
which  the  reformation  had  already  secured  to  man. 
Of  the  eighty-two  errors  canvassed  by  the  synod,  twen- 
ty nine  were  charged  to  Mistress  Hutchinson,  and 
retraction  of  them  was  ordered  by  the  church.  The 
State  united  with  the  Church  in  opposition  to  Mistress 
Hutchinson,  and  the  first  real  struggle  for  woman's 
religious  liberty,  (not  yet  at  an  end),  began  upon  this 
side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  principal  charge  brought 
against  Mistress  Hutchinson  was  that  she  had  pre- 
sumed to  instruct  men.  Possessed  of  a  fine  intellect 
and  strong  religious  fervor,  she  had  inaugurated  pri- 
vate meetings  for  the  instruction  of  her  own  sex; 
from  sixty  to  a  hundred  women  regularly  gathering  at 
her  house  to  hear  her  criticism  upon  the  Sunday  ser- 
mon and  Thursday  lectures.  These  meetings  proved 
so  interesting  that  men  were  soon  found  also  in  at- 
tendance and  for  these  reasons  she  was  arbitrarily 
tried  in  November  1637,  before  the  Massachusetts 
General  Court  upon  a  joint  charge  of  sedition  and 
heresy.  In  May  of  the  same  year  a  change  had*~taken 
place  in  the  civil  government  of  the  colony.  Sir 
Henry  Vane,  who  like  herself,  believed  in  the  su- 
preme authority  of  the  in-dwelling  spirit,  having  been 
superseded  by  John  Winthrop  as  governor,  the  latter 
sustaining  the  power  of  the  clergy  and  himself  taking 


WITCHCRAFT  287 

part  against  her.  Two  days  were  spent  by  him  and 
prominent  clergymen  in  her  examination,  resulting  in 
a  sentence  of  imprisonment  and  banishment  from  the 
colony  for  having  "traduced  the  ministers"  and  taught 
men  against  the  direct  authority  of  the  Apostle  Paul, 
who  declared  "I  suffer  not  a  woman  to  teach." 

Thus  the  old  world  restrictions  upon  woman,  and 
their  persecutions,  were  soon  duplicated  in  the  new 
world.  Liberty  of  opinion  became  as  serious  a  crime 
in  America  as  in  England,  and  here  as  in  Europe, 
the  most  saintly  virtue  and  the  purest  life  among  women 
were  not  proof  against  priestly  attack.  While  Mis- 
tress Hutchinson  was  the  first  woman  thus  to  suffer, 
many  others  were  also  persecuted.  When  Mary  Fisher 
and  Anne  Austin,  two  Quaker  women  who  had  become 
famous  for  their  promulgation  of  this  heretical  doctrine 
in  many  parts  of  the  world,  arrived  in  Boston  harbor, 
July  1656,  they  were  not  at  first  permitted  to  land, 
but  were  ultimately  transferred  to  the  Boston  jail, 
where  they  were  closely  confined,  and  notwithstand- 
ing the  heat  of  the  weather  their  one  window  was 
boarded  up.  Their  persons  were  also  stripped  and 
examined  for  signs  of  witchcraft,  but  fortunately  not 
a  mole  or  a  spot  could  be  found.  Boston — "The 
Bloody  Town" — was  the  center  of  this  persecuting 
spirit  and  every  species  of  wanton  cruelty  upon  wo 
man  was  enacted.  Stripped  nude  to  the  waist  they 
were  tied  to  a  whipping-post  on  the  south  side  of 
King  Street  and  flogged  on  account  of  their  religious 
opinions;  but  it  was  upon  the  famous  "Common"  that 
for  the  crime  of  free  speech,  a  half  nude  woman  with 
a  new  born  babe  at  her  breast  was  thus  publicly 
whipped;  and  it  was  upon  the  "Common"  that  Mary 
Dyer,    another    Quaker    woman,  was    hung    in     1659. 


288  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Both  she  and  Anne  Hutchinson  prophesied  calamity 
to  the  colony  for  its  unjust  course,  which  was  fulfilled, 
when  in  1684  it  lost  its  charter  in  punishment  for  its 
intolerance.  No  Christian  country  offered  a  refuge  for 
woman,  as  did  Canada  the  colored  slave.  But  the 
evils  of  woman's  persecution  by  the  church,  did  not 
end  with  the  wrongs  inflicted  upon  her;  they  were 
widely  extended,  affecting  the  most  common  interests 
of  the  world.  While  famines  were  unknown  among 
the  ancient  Romans  in  the  first  period  of  their  history, 
yet  Christendom  was  early  and  frequently  afflicted 
with  them.  While  the  operations  of  nature  were 
sometimes  the  cause,  the  majority  of  famines  were 
the  result  of  persecutions,  or  of  christian  wars,  es- 
pecially the  crusades  which  took  such  immense  num- 
bers of  men  from  the  duties  of  agriculture  at  home, 
making  them  a  prey  upon  the  scanty  resources  of  the 
countries  through  which  these  hordes  passed.  As 
was  seen  in  the  Irish  famine  of  1847 — 8  and  at  the 
present  moment  as  result  of  a  scanty  food  supply  in 
Russia,  pestilence  of  various  kinds  followed  famine 
years.  But  the  crusades  in  which  the  church  attempt- 
ed to  wrest  the  holy  sepulchre  from  Turkish  hands, 
were  scarcely  more  productive  of  famines  than  its 
persecuting  periods  when  mankind  lost  hope  in  them- 
selves and  the  future.  Our  own  country  has  shown 
the  effect  of  fear  and  persecution  upon  both  business 
and  religion,  as  during  the  witchcraft  period  of  New 
England,  scarcely  two  hundred  years  since,  all  business 
of  whatever  nature  in  country  and  in  town  was  neglected, 
and  even  the  meeting  house  was  allowed  to  fall  out 
of  repair.  Nor  was  this  ruin  of  a  temporary  nature, 
as  many  people  left  the  Colony  and  its  effects  de- 
scended to  those  yet  unborn.     Both    Bancroft's    His- 


WITCHCRAFT  289 

tory  of  the  United  States,  and  Lapham's  History  of 
the  Salem  Witchcraft,  paint  vivid  pictures  of  the  effects 
following  the  different  church  persecutions  of  woman. 
Of  the  Hutchinson  trial,  Bancroft  says: 

This  dispute  infused  its  spirit  into  everything.  It 
interferred  with  the  levy  of  troops  for  the  Pequot  war; 
it  influenced  the  respect  shown  to  magistrates;  the 
distribution  of  town  lots;  the  assessment  of  rates  and 
at  last  the  continued  existence  of  the  two  parties  was 
considered  inconsistent  with  public  peace. 

Of  the  witchcraft  period,  Upham  says: 

It  cast  its  shadows  over  a  broad  surface  and  they 
darkened  the  condition  of  generations  *  *  *  The  fields 
were  neglected  ;  fences,  roads,  barns,  even  the  meeting 
house  went  into  disrepair  *  *  *  A  scarcity  of  provis- 
ions nearly  amounting  to  a  famine  continued  for  some 
time.  Farms  were  brought  under  mortgage,  or  sacri- 
ficed, and  large  numbers  of  people  were  dispersed. 
The  worst  results  were  not  confined  to  the  village  but 
spread  more  or  less  over  the  country. 

Massachusetts  was  not  the  only  colony  that  treated 
witchcraft  as  a  crime.  Maryland,  New  Jersey  and 
Virginia  possessed  similar  enactments.  Witchcraft 
was  considered  and  treated  as  a  capital  offense  by  the 
laws  of  both  Pennsylvania  and  New  York,  trials  taking 
place  in  both  colonies  not  long  before  the  Salem  trag- 
edy. The  peaceful  Quaker,  William  Penn,  presided  upon 
the  bench  in  Pennsylvania  at  the  trial  of  two  Swedish 
women  accused  of  witchcraft  The  Grand  Jury  acting 
under  instruction  given  in  his  charge,  found  true 
bills  against  these  women,  and  Penn's  skirts  were 
only  saved  from  the  guilt  of  their  blood  by  some 
technical  irregularity  in  the  indictment. 

Virginia,  Delaware,  Maryland,  South  Carolina, 
Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  Massachusetts  and  New 
York,  eight  of  the  thirteen  colonies  recognized  witch- 


290  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

craft  as  a  capital  crime.    Margaret  M was  indicted 

for  witchcraft  in  Pennsylvania  in  1683,  the  law  against 
it  continuing  in  force  until  September  23,  1794.  By 
law  of  the  Province  of  East  New  Jersey,  1668,  any 
person  found  to  be  a  witch,  either  male  or  female,  was 
to  suffer  death.  In  that  state  the  right  of  complain- 
ing against  a  child  who  should  smite  or  curse  either 
parent,  pertained  to  both  father  and  mother;  the  pen- 
alty was  death.  As  late  as  1756,  Connecticut  recog- 
nized the  right  of  parents  to  dispose  of  children  in 
marriage.  In  Maryland  1666  the  commission  given 
to  magistrates  for  Somerset  county  directed  them  un- 
der oath  to  make  enquiries  in  regard  to  witchcraft, 
sorcery,  and  magic  arts.  In  1706  Grace  Sherwood  of 
Princess  Anne  County,  Virginia,  was  tried  for  witch 
craft.  The  records  of  the  trial  show  that  the  court 
after  a  consideration  of  the  charges,  ordered  the  sheriff 
to  take  the  said  Grace  into  his  custody  and  to  com- 
mit her  body  to  the  common  jail,  there  to  secure  her 
with  irons  or  otherwise,  until  brought  to  trial.82 

In  1692,  the  Grand  Jury  brought  a  bill  against  Mary 
Osgood  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  as 
follows: 

The  powers  for  our  sovereign  lord  and  lady,  the 
king  and  queen,  present  that  Mary  Osgood,  wife  of 
Captain  John  Osgood  in  the  county  of  Essex,  about 
eleven  years  ago  in  the  town  of  Andover  aforesaid, 
wickedly  ,  maliciously  and  feloniously  a  covenant  with 
the  devil  did  make  and  signed  the  devil's  book,  and 
took  the  devil  to  be  her  God,  and  consented  to  serve 
and  worship  him  and  was  baptized  by  the  devil  and 
renounced  her  former  Christian  baptism  and  promised 
to  the  devil  both  body  and  soul,  forever,  and  to  serve 
him;  by  which  diabolical  covenant  by  her  made  with 
the  devil;  she,  the  said  Mary  Osgood  is  become  a 
detestable  witch    against  the    peace    of  our  sovereign 

8a.  Howes.— Historical  Collection  of  Virginia,  p.  438. 


WITCHCRAFT  2QI 

lord  and  lady,  the  king  and  queen,  their  crown  and 
dignity  and  the  laws  in  that  case  made  and  provided. 
A  true  bill.83 

When  for  "witches"  we  read  "women,"  we  gain 
fuller  comprehension  of  the  cruelties  inflicted  by  the 
church  upon  this  portion  of  humanity.  Friends  were 
encouraged  to  cast  accusation  upon  their  nearest  and 
dearest,  rewards  being  offered  for  conviction.  Hus- 
bands who  had  ceased  to  care  for  their  wives  or  who 
by  reason  of  their  sickness  or  for  any  cause  found  them 
a  burden,  or  for  reasons  of  any  nature  desired  to  break 
the  indissoluble  bonds  of  the  church,  now  found  an 
easy  method.  They  had  but  to  accuse  the  wife  of 
witchcraft  and  the  marriage  was  dissolved  by  her 
death  at  the  stake.  Church  history  is  not  silent  upon 
such  instances,  and  mention  is  made  of  a  husband 
who  by  a  rope  about  the  neck  dragged  his  wife  before 
that  Arch-Inquisitor,  Sprenger,  making  accusation  of 
witchcraft  against  her.  No  less  from  protestant  than 
from  catholic  pulpits  were  people  exhorted  to  bring 
the  witch, even  if  of  one's  own   family,  to  justice. 

In  1736,  the  statute  against  witchcraft  was  repealed 
by  the  English  Parliament,  yet  a  belief  in  witchcraft 
is  still  largely  prevalent  even  among  educated  people. 
Dr.  F.  G.  Lee  the  vicar  of  an  English  church,  that 
of  All  Saints  in  Lambeth,  a  few  years  since  publicly 
deprecated  the  abolition  of  its  penalties  in  a  work 
entitled  "Glimpses  of  the  Twilight,"  complaining  that 
the  laws  against  witchcraft  had  been  "foolishly  and 
short-sightedly  repealed."  A  remarkable  case  occurred 
in  Prussia  1883  when  the  father  of  a  bed-ridden  girl, 
having  become  persuaded  that  his  daughter  was  be- 
witched by  a  woman  who  had  occasionally  given  her 
apples  and    pears,  was    advised    the   child    would    be 

83.  Collection  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  for  the  year  1800,  p,  341 , 


292  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

cured  if  she  drank  some  of  the  blood  of  the  supposed 
witch.  The  woman  was  therefore  entrapped  into  a 
place  where  some  of  the  chief  men  of  the  commune 
had  assembled  to  receive  her.  She  was  seized,  one 
of  her  fingers  pricked  with  a  needle  and  her  blood 
given  to  the  sick  child.  In  1885  a  case  of  slander 
based  upon  alleged  witchcraft  came  before  Justice 
Randolphs,  District  Court  of  Jersey  City.  The  justice 
listened  to  the  evidence  for  several  hours  before  re- 
calling the  fact  that  there  was  no  law  upon  which  he 
could  base  his  decision,  the  latest  legislation  being 
the  law  of  1668  repealed  1795  (twenty  years  after 
our  Declaration  of  Independence),  the  crime  was  no 
longer  officially  recognized.84  It  is  curious  to  note 
the  close  parallel  between  accusations  during  the 
witchcraft  period  and  those  against  the  New  Jersey 
suspect  of  1885.  It  was  said  of  her  that  during  the 
night  she  accomplished  such  feats  by  supernatural 
power  as  jumping  from  a  third  story  window,  alight- 
ing upon  a  gate  post  as  gently  as  a  falling  feather. 
It  was  also  asserted  that  people  whom  she  was  known 
to  dislike  became  gradually  ill,  wasting  away  until 
they  died.  The  accused  woman  declared  it  was  her 
superior  knowledge  that  was  feared,  and  thus  again  the 
middle  ages  are  paralleled,  as  the  witches  of  that 
period  were  usually  women  of  superior  knowledge. 
In  1882,  a  Wisconsin  farmer  was  put  under  bonds  to 
keep  the  peace,  on  account  of  his  attempts  to  assault 
an  old  lady  who  he  averred  was  a  witch,  who  in- 
jured his  cattle,  and  entered  his  house  through  the 
chimney  or  key  hole,  to  his  great  terror  and  distress. 
The  state  of  Indiana  about  sixty  years    ago  possessed 

84.  No  prosecution,  suit  or  proceedings  shall  be  commenced  or  carried  on  in 
any  court  of  this  state  against  any  person  for  conjuration  or  witchcraft,  sorcery 
or  enchantment  or  for  charging  another  with  such  offense. 


WITCHCRAFT  293 

a  neighborhood  where  the  people  believed  in  witch- 
craft. If  the  butter  failed  to  come,  or  the  eggs  to 
hatch,  or  a  calf  got  choked,  or  even  if  the  rail  fences 
fell  down  when  covered  with  sleet  and  snow,  the 
whole  trouble  was  attributed  to  the  witches,  who  were 
also  believed  to  have  the  remarkable  power  of  saddling 
and  bridling  a  man  and  with  sharp  spurs  riding  him 
over  the  worst  roads  imaginable,  to  his  great  harm 
and  fatigue.  Even  the  great  Empire  State,  as  late  as 
January  1892,  had  within  its  borders  a  case  of  murder 
where  an  inoffensive  old  man  lost  his  life  because 
he  was  believed  to  be  a  wizard;  and  this  occurred  in 
the  center  of  a  prosperous  farming  country  where 
money  is  liberally  expended  for  educational  purposes, 
this  being  one  of  the  rare  instances  where  a  man 
fell  under  suspicion. 

It  is  but  a  few  years  since  the  great  and  enlightened 
city  of  Paris  caused  the  arrest,  under  police  authority, 
of  fourteen  women  upon  charge  of  sorcery;  and  it  is 
but  little  more  than  twenty  years  since  a  woman  in 
the  state  of  Puebla,  Mexico,  was  hung  and  burned 
as  a  witch,  because  unable  to  reveal  the  whereabouts 
of  a  lost  animal.  She  was  seized,  hung  to  a  tree 
shot  at  and  then  plunged  into  fire  until  she  expired.85 
The  body  at  first  buried  in  the  cemetery,  was 
exhumed  the  following  dav  by  order  of  the  priest,  who 
refused  to  allow  the  remains  of  a  witch  to  be  buried 
in  consecrated  ground.  The  state,  in  person  of  the 
mayor  of  the  city,  authorized  the  proceedings  by  tak- 
ing part  in  them  as  principal  persecutor  In  the 
same  province  another  woman  was  severely  flogged  as 
a  witch,  by  four  men,  one  of  them  her  own  son.    Thus 

85.  Under  the  church  theory  that  all  members  of  the  witch's  family  are  tainted, 
the  husband  of  this  unfortunate  woman  hid  himself,  fearing  the  same  fate. — 
Telegram. 


294  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

now,  as  in  its  earlier  ages,  wherever  the  light  of  civi- 
lization has  not  overcome  the  darkness  of  the  church, 
we  find  woman  still  a  sufferer  from  that  ignorance  and 
superstition  which  under  Christianity,  teaches  that 
she  brought  sin  into  the  world. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

WIVES. 

Under  Roman  law  before  Christianity  had  gained 
control  of  the  empire,  a  form  of  marriage  existed 
known  as  "Usus,"  which  secured  much  freedom  to 
wives.  It  was  entered  into  without  the  terrifying  re- 
ligious ceremonies  which  made  "Confarreatio,"  prac- 
tically indissoluble  and  the  wife  the  veritable  slave  of 
the  husband,  who  held  power  even  over  her  life. 
Neither  did  it  possess  the  civil  formality  of  "Coemptio" 
under  which  the  bride  purchased  entrance  into  the 
marriage  duties  and  her  husband's  household  by  the 
payment  of  three  pieces  of  copper.1  "Coemptio" 
like  "Confarreatio"  gave  the  husband  entire  power  over 
the  person  and  property  of  the  wife,  while  "Usus,"  a 
form  of  simple  consent,  left  the  wife  practically  free, 
keeping  her  own  name  and  property.  The  real  origin 
of  this  form  of  marriage  is  not  fully  known.  Maine 
declared  it  to  be  as  old  as  or  even  older  than  the  Twelve 
Tables,  under  which  woman  possessed  the  right  to 
repudiation  in  marriage.  These  laws,  a  compilation 
of  still  older  ones,  were  afterwards  incorporated  into 
statutes  by  a  woman  of  Athens,  and  were  received  by 
the  Romans   as   extremely   pure    natural   laws.2  Plato 

i.  He  bought  his  bride  of  her  parents  according  to  the  custom  of  antiquity, 
and  she  followed  the  coemption  by  purchasing  with  three  pieces  of  copper  a  just 
introduction  to  his  treasury  and  household  duties.     Gibbon.—  Rome,  4;  395. 

2.  By  the  law  of  the  Twelve  Tables  woman  possessed  the  right  of  repudiation 
in  marriage.    These  tables  were  a  compilation  of  still  older  laws  or  customs,  a 

295 


296  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

refers  to  an  early  Athens  entirely  ruled  by  women, 
its  laws  of  pre-eminently  just  character.  Tradition, 
whose  basis  is  half  forgotten,  half  remembered  history, 
attributes  the  origin  of  Athens  to  the  ancient  Atlan- 
tians.  The  former  existence  of  this  submerged  con- 
tinent is  daily  becoming  more  fully  recognized.  The 
explorations  of  the  "Challenger,"  the  "Dolphin,"  the 
"Gazelle,"  and  the  discoveries  of  Le  Plongeon  in  Yuca- 
tan, at  later  date,  confirming  olden  tradition.  Maine 
thus  ascribes  a  much  older  origin  to  "Usus"  than  Gib- 
bon, who  attributes  it  to  the  effect  of  the  Punic  tri- 
umphs.3 In  reality  "Usus"  seems  to  have  been  a 
reminiscence  of  the  Matriarchate,  incorporated  into 
the  law  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  and  accepted  by  Rome 
as  a  more  just  form  of  the  marriage  relation  for  women 
than  the  religious  "Confarraetio"  or  the  civil  form  of 
"Coemptio. "  But  as  Rome  increased  in  wealth  and 
luxurious  modes  of  living,  the  influence  of  the  Pa- 
triarchate correspondingly  extended,  the  perception 
of  justice  at  the  same  time  diminishing.  Pomp  and 
ceremony  were  associated  with  the  marriage  rite  among 
patricians,  while  "Usus"  was  regarded  as  a  plebeian 
form  especially  suited    to  the  populace.     But  at  later 

species  of  common  law  incorporated  into  statutes  by  Lachis  of  Athens,  daughter 
of  one  Majestes;  and  were  so  wise  and  of  such  benefit  to  the  people  of  Attica 
that  the  Romans  received  them  as  natural  laws  in  which  there  was  more  of 
patriotism  and  purity  than  in  all  the  volumes  of  Popinanus.  H.  S.  Maine. — 
Ancient  Law. 

3.  After  the  Punic  triumphs  the  matrons  of  Rome  aspired  to  the  common  bene- 
fits of  a  free  and  opulent  republic.  *  *  *  They  declined  the  solemnities  of 
the  old  nuptials;  defeated  the  annual  prescription  by  an  absence  of  three  days, 
and  without  losing  their  name  or  independence  subscribed  the  liberal  and  defi- 
nite terms  of  a  marriage  contract.  Of  their  private  fortunes  they  commuted  the 
use  and  secured  the  property;  the  estate  of  a  wife  could  neither  be  alienated  or 
mortgaged  by  a  prodigal  husband.  Religious  and  civil  rites  were  no  longer  essen- 
tial, and  between  persons  of  similar  rank,  the  apparent  community  of  life  was 
allowed  as  sufficient  evidence  of  their  nuptials.  *  *  *  When  the  Roman 
maaons  became  the  equal  and  voluntary  companions  of  their  lords,  their  mar- 
riage like  other  partnerships  might  be  dissolved.    Gibbon.— Rome,  4;  347. 


WIVES  297 

date  when  Rome  rebelling  against  the  tyranny  of  her 
rulers,  tended  towards  a  republican  form  of  govern- 
ment, "Usus"  again  became  general.  It  was  impossi- 
ble for  patrician  women  not  to  see  the  greater  free- 
dom of  plebeian  wives  under  "Usus,"  a  form  that  while 
equally  binding  in  the  essentials  of  the  union  did  not 
make  the  wife  a  marital  slave,*  and  "Usus"  eventu- 
ally became  the  basis  of  Roman  legal  conception  of 
marriage,  against  which  Christianity  from  the  first 
waged  a  warfare  of  ever  increasing  fierceness,6  the 
very  foundation  of  that  religion  being  the  subordina- 
tion of  woman  in  every  relation  of  life.  Under  "Usus" 
the  mere  fact  of  two  persons  living  together  as  husband 
and  wife  was  regarded  as  a  marriage.  If  during  each 
year  the  wife  remained  away  from  the  home  for  three 
days,  she  kept  herself  from  under  her  husband's 
power.  She  remained  a  part  of  her  father's  family; 
her  husband  could  not  mortgage  or  in  any  way  alienate 
her  property.  This  was  absolutely  contrary  to  the 
laws  of  the  christian  form  of  marriage,  under  which 
the  wife  surrendered  her  person,  her  property,  and 
her  conscience,  into  the  indisputable  control  of  the 
husband.  Under  "Usus"  a  large  proportion  of  Roman 
property  fell  into  woman's  hands.  She  became  the 
real  estate  holder  of  the  Eternal  City  and  its  prov- 
inces, and  in  consequence  was  treated  with  great  re 
spect;    the  holding  of  property,  especially   of    real  es- 

4.  Uses  or  Usucapion,  was  a  form  of  civil  marriage  securing  the  wife  more 
freedom  than  the  form  which  held  her  "under  his  thumb"  as  his  daughter.  It 
was  as  old  or  even  older  than  the  Twelve  Tables,  and  although  for  many  cen- 
turies not  considered  quite  as  respectable  a  form  of  marriage  as  that  in  which  the 
wife  became  the  husband's  slave  with  divorce  impossible,  it  eventually  grew  to 
be  the  customary  form  of  Roman  marriage.  Maine. — Early  History  of  Ancient 
Institutions \  p.  517. 

5.  It  was  with  the  state  of  conjugal  relations  thus  produced  that  the  growing 
Christianity  of  the  Roman  world  waged  a  war  ever  increasing  in  fierceness,  yet  it 
remained  to  the  last  the  basis  of  the  Roman  legal  conception  of  marriage. — Ibid. 


298  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

tate  conducing  to  that  end.  Under  "Usus:'  the  cru- 
elties sanctioned  by  "Confarraetio"  were  rended  im- 
possible; a  wife  could  no  longer  be  put  to  death,  as 
was  formerly  the  custom,  for  having  tasted  wine,  a 
treacherous  kiss  from  her  husband  upon  his  return 
home,  betraying  her,  nor  could  her  infant  daughter 
be  exposed  or  murdered  at  the  pleasure  of  her  hus- 
band who  as  inexorable  master  was  frequently  wont 
to  refuse  her  pleadings  for  the  life  of  her  babe,  calling 
her  prayers  naught  but  the  scruples  of  a  foolish  wo- 
man.6 

Thus  under  "Usus"  human  life  became  more  sacred, 
and  woman  endowed  with  a  geater  sense  of  personal 
security.  It  affected  an  entire  change  for  the  better, 
in  the  moral  sentiments  of  the  Roman  empire.7  A 
complete  revolution  had  thus  passed  over  the  con- 
stitution of  the  family.  This  must  have  been  the 
period,  says  Maine,  when  a  juriconsulist  of  the  em- 
pire denned  marriage  as  a  life  long  fellowship  of  all 
divine  and  human  rights. 

Not  alone  Maine,  but  also  Reeves,  failed  not  to  see 
that  the  disruption  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  very 
unfavorable  to  the  personal  and  proprietory  rights  of 
woman.8  The  practical  effect  of  the  common  Roman 
form  of  marriage  being  the  absolute  legal  independ- 
ence of  the  wife,  under  which  a  large  proportion  of 
Roman  property  fell   into    the    hands    of  women,     the 

6.  When  the  Chremes  of  Terence  reproaches  his  wife  for  not  obeying  his 
orders  and  exposing  their  infant,  he  speaks  like  a  father  and  master,  and  silences 
the  scruples  of  a  foolish  woman.     Milman. — Note  to  Gibbons  Rome. 

7.  "  'Usus'  had  the  very  important  consequence  that  the  woman  so  married  re- 
mained in  the  eye  of  the  law  in  the  family  of  her  father,  and  was  under  his  guar- 
dianship and  not  that  of  her  husband.  A  complete  revolution  had  thus  passed 
over  the  constitution  of  the  family.  This  must  have  been  the  period  when  a 
jurisconsult  of  the  empire  defined  marriage  as  a  life-long  fellowship  of  all 
divine  and  human  rights  " 

8.  Reeves.— Hist.  Evg.  Law,  p.  337. 


WIVES  299 

wife  retaining  her  family  name  and  family  inheritance. 
All  this  was  changed  as  soon  as  Christianity  obtained 
the  rule.  Under  Christian  forms  of  marriage  a  wife 
was  taken  from  her  own  family  and  transferred  into 
that  of  her  husband  the  same  as  a  piece  of  property. 
She  assumed  his  name,  the  same  as  the  slave  took  that 
of  the  new  master  to  whom  he  was  transferred.  That 
this  idea  of  the  wife  as  a  slave  did  not  belong  alone 
to  the  earlier  christian  period,  but  is  a  part  of  chris- 
tian doctrine  of  to-day  is  clearly  shown  by  the  con- 
tinued custom  of  a  woman's  dropping  her  family 
name  upon  marriage  and  assuming  that  of  the  hus- 
band-master. 

For  this  middle  Roman  period  carried  its  blessings 
to  wives  no  longer  than  until  the  empire  became 
christianized,  when  the  tyranny  of  ecclesiastical  mar- 
riage again  fell  to  womans'  lot.  While  under  the  in- 
fluence of  "Usus,"  Roman  jurists  of  the  middle  period 
had  declared  the  ownership  of  property  by  married 
women  to  be  a  principle  of  equity  this  drew  forth  op- 
posing legislation  from  the  christians,  and  under  chris- 
tian law,  the  husband  again  became  master  of  his 
wife's  person,  and  property,  her  children  also  falling 
under  his  entire  control,  the  mother  possessing  no  au- 
thority over  them.  From  that  period  down  to  the 
twentieth  century  of  Christianity,  under  all  changing 
civil  laws,  woman  has  ever  felt  the  oppressions  of 
ecclesiasticism  in  this  relation.9 

Guizot  strangely  declares  that  woman's  present, 
and  what  he  terms,  superior,  position  in  the  house- 
hold to-day,  is  due  to  feudalism.10     The  isolation  and 

9.  Maine  says:     No  society  which  preserves  any  tincture  of  Christian  Institu. 
tions  is  likely  to  restore  to  married  women  the  personal  liberty  conferred  on  them 
by  middle  Roman  laws. — Ancient  Law. 
10.  Reeves  says,  while  many  great  minds,  as  Lord  Chief  Justice  Hale,  Lord 


300  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

strife  under  which  the  nobility  lived  during  the  feudal 
period,  warring  against  each  other  when  not  engaged 
in  foreign  aggression,  compelled  to  certain  forms  of 
social  life  within  each  castle,  thus  creating  the  modern 
family,  or  the  family  under  its  present  social  form. 
At  that  period  the  feudal  wife  with  her  retinue  of 
household  serfs  and  a  vast  number  of  her  husband's 
retainers  in  charge,  held  a  more  responsible  position 
than  that  of  woman  under  primitive  christian  habits 
of  life.  But  the  knights  and  lords  of  these  feudal  cas- 
tles were  lecherous  robbers,  rather  than  men  of  kindly 
regard  for  womankind.  Their  inclination  was  not  to- 
wards justice  or  family  life,  but  the  despoiling  of  all 
beneath  them,  and  even  of  their  equals  with  whom 
they  were  not  upon  terms  of  amity.  The  ruins  of 
such  castles,  like  the  nest  of  the  eagle,  perched  upon 
some  inaccessible  rock,  add  to-day  an  element  cf  pic- 
turesque beauty  to  the  Rhine  and  other  rivers  of 
Europe,  but  owe  their  elevated  and  isolated  positions 
to  the  evil  character  of  their  owners,  the  banditti  of 
the  middle  ages.11  When  not  engaged  with  their  king 
in  warfare,  they  made  the  despoiling  of  serfs  and  the 
betrayal  of  wives  and  daughters  their  chief  diversion, 
the  robbery  of  burghers  and  travelers  their  business ; 
churchmen  equally  with  laymen  living  by  the  same 
means. 

During    the  year    1268,    Rudolph    of    Germany,  de- 

John  Somers,  Henry  Spellman,  Dr.  Brady  and  Sir  Martin  Wright  think  feudal- 
ism came  in  with  the  conqueror,  others,  as  Coke,  Seldon,  Bacon  and  Sir  Roger 
Owen  are  of  opinion  that  tenures  were  common  among  the  Saxons.  Blackstone, 
Dalrymple  and  Sullivan  endeavor  to  compromise  the  dispute  by  admitting  an 
imperfect  system  of  feuds  to  have  been  instituted  before  the  conquest.—  History 
of  English  Law,  Vol.  I.,  p.  18-19. 

11.  A  certain  bishop,  wishing  a  person  to  take  charge  of  his  castle  during  his 
absence,  the  latter  asked  how  he  should  support  himself.  For  answer  the  bishop 
pointed  to  a  procession  of  tradesmen  with  their  goods  then  crossing  the  valley  at 
their  feet. 


WIVES  3d 

stroyed  sixty-six  castles  of  these  christian  robber  no- 
bility in  Thuringia  alone,  and  hung  twenty-nine  of 
these  "family  builders"  at  one  time  in  Erfurt.  He 
compared  Rome  to  the  lion's  den  in  fable;  the  foot- 
steps of  many  animals  to  be  found  going  thither,  but 
none  coming  back.  At  this  period  the  soldiers  of 
Christian  Europe  found  pleasure  in  torture  for  its  own 
sake,  chiefly  selecting  women  as  their  victims.  In  me- 
diaeval England  the  condition  of  woman  was  one  of 
deep  degradation.  Wives  were  bought  and  daughters 
sold  for  many  hundred  years  after  the  introduction  of 
Christianity.12  Although  England  was  christianized  in 
the  fourth  century,  it  was  not  until  the  tenth  that  the 
christian  wife  of  a  christian  husband  acquired  the  right 
of  eating  at  table  with  him,  nor  until  the  same  centu- 
ry did  a  daughter  gain  the  right  of  rejecting  the  hus- 
band her  father  might  have  selected  for  her.  While 
the  sale  of  daughters  was  practiced  in  England  for 
seven  hundred  years  after  the  introduction  of  Chris- 
tianity, we  note  that  by  the  ancient  law  of  India,  a 
father  was  forbidden  to  sell  his  daughter  in  marriage, 
or  receive  the  smallest  present  therefor.  In  mediaeval 
England  the  daughter  was  held  as  a  portion  of  the 
father's  property  to  be  sold  to  the  highest  bidder.  The 
Mundium13  recognized  the  father's  right  to  sell  his 
daughter  to  the  husband  he  might  select  for  her,  usu- 
ally the  highest  bidder  in  point  of  wealth  or  political 
influence.  While  Marquette  pertained  to  kings, 
feudal  lords,  and  men  of  np  family  relationship  to 
the    victim,   Mundium    inhered   in  the    father  himself. 

12.  Wives  were  bought  in  England  from  the  fifth  to  the  eleventh  century. 
Herbert  Spencer. — Descriptive  Sociology  0/ England. 

13.  There  was  another  law  even  more  odious  than  Marquette;  the  father's 
right  to  the  price  of  mundium,  in  other  words,  the  price  of  his  daughter 
Legouve. — Hist.  Morales  des  Fetnmes,  p.  104. 


302  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Through  it  he  sacrificed  his  own  daughter  for  money 
or  power. 

The  practice  of  buying  wives  with  cattle  or  money 
was  regulated  both  in  the  laws  of  King  ^Ethelbert  and 
King  Ine.  In  event  of  the  woman  who  had  been  thus 
bought,  becoming  a  widow,  half  of  the  sum  paid  for 
her  seems  to  have  been  set  aside  for  her  support,  pro- 
vided her  husband  had  not  died  without  issue.  The 
other  half  remained  absolutely  the  property  of  her 
father,  brother,  or  guardian  by  whom  she  had  been 
sold.  At  a  somewhat  later  period  the  church  doctrine 
of  celibacy  influenced  all  ranks  of  men,  while  at  the 
same  time  an  unmarried  woman  because  of  her  maid- 
enhood was  regarded  as  disreputable.  A  bachelor 
held  honorable  place,  even  though  all  celibate  men 
were  looked  upon  as  libertines  of  especially  impure 
life.  Warnings  against  matrimony  were  the  ordinary 
topics  of  conversation,  while  virtue  in  women  was  held 
so  little  sacred  that  no  nearness  of  relationship  was 
security  for  either  a  married  or  a  single  woman.14 
Husbands  trafficked  in  the  honor  of  their  wives,  fathers 
sold  their   daughters,16  yet  if  under  temptation,  a    wo- 

14.  Murder  under  the  name  of  war,  the  ruin  of  women  under  the  name  of  gal- 
lantry, were  the  chief  occupations  of  the  nobility  Pike. — Hist  of  Crime  in 
England. 

The  chief  qualification  for  success  at  courts  was  the  power  of  making  and 
appreciating  mirth.  The  infidelities  of  women  were  commonly  the  narrator's 
theme,  and  an  exhortation  to  avoid  matrimony  was  the  most  common  form  of 
advice  given  by  a  man  to  his  friend.  War  and  intrigue  were  regarded  as  the 
principal  amusements  of  life;  the  acquisition  of  wealth  the  only  object  worth 
serious  consideration.  A  consequence  of  this  creed  was  that  the  husband  fre- 
quently set  a  price  upon  his  wife's  virtue,  and  made  a  profit  out  of  his  own 
dishonor.  Fathers  were  ready  to  sell  their  daughters. — Ibid. 

15.  Both  married  and  single  found  their  worst  foes  in  their  nearest  friends. 
The  traffic  in  women  was  none  the  less  real  in  Christian  England  than  it  is 
now  in  the  slave  marts  of  Stamboul  or  Constantinople. — Ibid. 

One  of  the  most  recent  illustrations  of  the  general  regard  in  which  woman  is 
held  throughout  Christendom,  is  the  experience  of  the  young  California  heiress, 
Florence  Blythe,  who  although  but  fifteen  years  old,  was  in  constant  receipt  of 
proposals  of  marriage  both  at  home  and  from  abroad.    Her  attorney,  General 


WIVES  303 

man  felt,  outside  of  such  sale,  her  punishment  was 
most  severe.  To  a  husband  was  accorded  the  power 
of  life  and  death  over  his  household,  and  either  per- 
sonally or  by  means  of  a  hired  assassin  he  not  unfre- 
quently  assigned  his  wife  to  death  or  to  a  punishment 
more  atrocious  and  barbarous.18     Disraelli  says: 

If  in  these  ages  of  romance  and  romances  the  fair 
sex  were  scarcely  approached  without  the  devotion  of 
idolatry,  whenever  "the  course  of  true  love"  altered; 
when  the  frail  spirit  loved  too  late,  and  should  not 
have  loved,  the  punishment  became  more  criminal 
than  the  crime,  for  there  was  more  selfish  revenge  and 
terrific  malignity  than  of  justice  when  autocratical 
man  became  the  executioner  of  his  own  decree. 

The  English  christian  husband  of  that  age  is  paral- 
leled by  certain  North  American  Indians  of  the  present 
day.17  The  horizon  of  woman's  life  was  bounded 
by  the  wishes  of  her  father  or  husband.  Single,  she 
was  regarded  as  a  more  or  less  valuable  piece  of  prop- 
erty18 for  whose  sale  the  owner  was  entitled  to  make 
as  good  a  bargain  as  possible.  It  was  as  a  bride  that 
the   greatest   sum    was     secured.19     Prominent    among 

Hunt,  said:  "I  do  not  think  there  is  a  woman  living  who  has  had  the  number  of 
written  proposals  that  Florence  has  received,  but  in  all  the  letters  woman  is  re. 
garded  as  a  chattel,  a  thing  to  be  bought  and  sold.  The  constant  receipt  of  let- 
ters of  this  character,  and  the  equally  constant  attempt  of  adventurers  to  gain  a 
personal  interview  with  the  child,  at  last  became  unendurable,  and  to  escape 
such  insulting  persecution,  Florence  suddenly  married  a  young  man  of  her  ac- 
quaintance living  near  her."  These  letters,  among  them,  from  sixty  titled  Euro- 
peans, lords,  counts,  dukes,  barons,  viscounts,  marquises  and  even  one  prince, 
confirm  the  statement  of  August  Bebel,  that  marriage  sales  of  women  are  still  as 
common  as  in  the  middle  ages,  and  are  expected  in  most  Christian  countries. 

16.  A  husband  upon  his  return  from  the  Crusades,  finding  his  wife  had  been 
untrue,  imprisoned  her  in  a  room  so  small  she  could  neither  stand  erect  nor  lie  at 
full  length;  her  only  window  looking  out  upon  the  dead  body  of  her  lover  swing- 
ing in  chains. 

17.  The  Shoshone  Indian  who  hires  his  wife  out  as  a  harlot,  inflicts  capital 
punishment  on  her  if  she  goes  with  another  without  his  knowledge.  Bancroft. — 
Native  Races,  1;  436. 

18.  Therefore  a  single  woman  for  whom  no  bid  was  offered,  an  "old  maid" 
was  looked  upon  with  contempt  as  a  being  of  no  value  in  the  eyes  of  men. 

19.  Hist,  of  Crime  in  England,  Vol.  1,  p.  90. 


304  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  laws  of  the  first  Christian  king  of  Kent,  were  pro- 
visions for  the  transfer  of  money  or  cattle  in  exchange 
for  the  bride.20  The  theory  of  woman's  ownership 
by  man  was  everywhere  carried  into  practice,  and  with 
great  severity  in  case  the  wife  proved  unfaithful  to 
her  enforced  vows.  The  facts  that  her  consent  to  the 
marriage  had  not  been  asked,  that  mayhap  the  man 
she  was  forced  to  wed  was  utterly  repugnant  to  her, 
that  her  affections  might  already  have  been  bestowed, 
that  she  was  transferred  like  a  piece  of  goods  with  no 
voice  upon  the  question,  were  not  taken  into  consid- 
eration, and  did  the  husband  not  choose  to  kill  his 
derelict  spouse,  the  question  still  remained  one  of 
property,*1  and  a  new  bride  was  demanded  of  the  lover 
in  place  of  the  wife  whose  love  he  had  gained. 

A  husband,  attracted  by  a  new  face,  more  wealth, 
greater  political  influence,  or  for  any  reason  desiring 
to  be  rid  of  his  wife,  was  regarded  as  justifiable  in  hir- 
ing an  assassin  to  strangle  her,  or  if  walking  by  a 
river-brink,  of  himself  pushing  her  into  the  water 
where  her  cries  for  help  were  disregarded.  Those  in 
whose  hearts  pity  rose,  were  prevented  from  giving 
aid,  by  such  remarks  as,  "It  is  nothing,  only  a  woman 
being   drowned."22     A    horse  or  other  domestic  animal 

20.  By  the  laws  of  the  king  of  Wessex,  who  lived  at  the  end  of  the  VIII.  cen- 
tury, the  purchase  of  wives  is  deliberately  sanctioned;  in  the  preface  it  is  stated 
that  the  compilation  was  drawn  up  with  the  assistance  of  the  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester and  a  large  assemblage  of  God's  servants. — Ibid. 

21.  Nothing,  says  Pike,  was  considered  but  the  market  value  of  the  woman, 
and  the  adulterer  was  compelled  to  expend  the  equivalent  of  her  original  price 
on  the  purchase  of  a  new  bride,  whom  he  formally  delivered  to  the  injured  hus- 
band. Nor  were  these  laws  merely  secular,  they  were  enacted  and  enforced  by 
all  the  dread  power  of  the  church.—  Ibid 

22.  In  the  14th  century  either  the  female  character  was  utterly  dissolute,  or 
the  tyranny  of  husbands  utterly  reckless,  when  we  find  that  it  was  no  uncommon 
circumstance  that  women  were  strangled  by  masked  assassins,  or  walking  by  the 
river  side  were  plunged  into  it.  This  drowning  of  women  gave  rise  to  a  popular 
proverb:    "It  is  nothing,  only  a  woman  being  drowned."    And  this  condition  con- 


WIVES  305 

received  more  consideration  than  the  women  of  a 
household.  Notwithstanding  this  period,  the  early 
part  of  the  fourteenth  century,  before  the  days  of 
printing  or  rapid  intercourse  between  nations,  yet  the 
evil  fame  of  Christendom  reached  distant  lands.  Its 
hypocrisy  and  baseness  were  known  by  those  very 
Saracens  from  whom  the  Crusaders  attempted  to  wrest 
the  Holy  Sepulchre.  To  Sir  John  Mandeville  the 
Sultan  of  Egypt  mercilessly  criticised  the  Christianity 
of  England23  and  the  christian  method  of  serving 
God;  the  total  disregard  of  chastity,  the  sale  of  daugh- 
ters, sisters  and  wives.  We  cannot  agree  with 
Disraeli  in  his  doubts  if  there  was  a  single  christian 
in  all  Christendom  at  this  period.  To  the  contrary, 
it  may  be  regarded  as  an  epoch  when  the  doctrines 
of  Christianity  were  most  fully  sustained,  the  church 
at  that  time  carrying  out  the  principles  of  both  the 
Old  and  the  New  Testament  regarding  women.  From 
Moses  to  Paul,  the  Bible  everywhere  speaks  of  her 
as  a  being  made  for  man,  secondary  to  man,  and  un- 
der his  authority  by  direct  command  of  the  Almighty; 
the  state,  as  coadjutor  and  servant  of  the  church,  bas- 
ing her  codes  of  law2*  upon  its  teachings.  Under 
these  codes  woman  has  not  only  been  looked  upon  as 
naturally  unchaste,  but  also  regarded  as  a  liar,  the 
state  demanding  the  testimony  of  two  or  three,  and 
in  some  instances  of   seven  women  to    invalidate  that 

stituted  the  domestic  life  of  England  from  the  12th  century  to  the  first  civil  war, 
when  the  taste  of  men  for  bloodshed  found  wider  scope,  and  from  the  murder  of 
women  they  advanced  to  the  practice  of  cutting  one  another's  throats.  Disraeli. — 
Amenities  of  Literature,  Vol.  I.,  p.  95. 

23.  "And  they  were  so  covetous  that  for  a  little  silver  they  sellen  'ein  daughters, 
'ein  sisters  and  'ein  own  wives,  to  putten  'ein  to  lechery." 

24.  The  Church  from  the  earliest  period  furnished  its  full  portion  to  the  codes 
of  our  simple  forefathers,  that  of  the  first  Christian  king  being  that  for  the  prop- 
erty of  God  and  the  Church  (if  stolen)  twelve-fold  compensation  was  to  be 
made.     Thorpe. — Ancient  Laws  and  Institutions  of  England. 


306  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  one  man;  the  man  even  then  in  extreme  cases  clear- 
ing himself  by  his  single  oath.  Condemned  as  having 
brought  evil  into  the  world,  woman's  every  step  was 
looked  upon  with  suspicion,  and  the  most  brutal  treat- 
ment as  far  short  of  her  just  deserts.  To  speak  well 
of  her  was  to  cause  misgivings  of  one's  self.  The 
system  of  defamation  inaugurated  by  the  church  in 
reference  to  women,  was  later  recognized  by  the  Jesuits 
as  a  most  effective  plan  for  the  personal  subjugation 
of  men.  Busenbaum,  an  influential  writer  of  this  or- 
der, directing: 

Whenever  you  would  ruin  a  person  you  must  begin 
by  spreading  calumnies  to  defame  them.  Repetition 
and  perseverance  will  at  length  give  the  consistency 
of  probability,  and  the  calumnies  will  stick  to  a  dis- 
tant day. 

The  astute  Jesuits  learned  their  lesson  from  church 
treatment  of  women.  Its  practical  results  were  ever 
before  their  eyes  in  the  contempt  with  which  woman 
was  regarded,  and  her  own  consequent  loss  of  self- 
respect.  Under  early  and  mediaeval  christian  law,  as  in 
most  states  to-day,  the  father  alone  had  right  to  the 
disposal  of  his  children.  He  possessed  the  sole  power 
of  giving  away  his  daughter  in  marriage;  if  he  died, 
this  right  devolved  upon  the  eldest  son;  only  in  case 
there  were  no  sons  was  the  right  of  the  mother  in  any 
way  recognized.  If  neither  father  or  brother  were 
living,  the  mother  gave  her  daughter  away  in  mar- 
riage, and  this  was  the  only  instance  in  which  one 
woman  possessed  control  over  another  woman,  the 
law  allowing  the  mother  no  voice  in  the  marriage  of 
her  daughter  unless  she  was  a  widow  without  sons. 
So  greatly  enslaved  were  daughters,  that  non-consent 
of  the  victim  in  no    way  impaired    the  validity   of  the 


WIVES  307 

marriage.25  A  girl  was  simply  a  piece  of  family  prop- 
erty to  be  disposed  of  as  the  family  thought  best. 
Although  wives  were  simply  the  slaves  of  husbands, 
yet  the  condition  of  an  unmarried  woman  was  even 
more  deplorable.  Deprived  of  the  society  of  young 
persons  of  her  own  sex,  not  allowed  speech  with  any 
man  outside  of  her  own  family,  she  was  fortunate  if 
she  escaped  personal88  ill-treatment  in  her  father's 
house.  Not  permitted  to  sit  in  the  presence  of  either 
her  father  or  her  mother,  continually  found  fault  with, 
the  laws  constraining  her  to  marry  while  giving  her 
no  preference  as  to  a  husband,  and  marriage  still  more 
fully  taking  from  her  the  control  of  her  own  person, 
yet  it  was  anxiously  looked  forward  to  as  at  least  a 
change  of  masters,  and  the  constant  hope  that  in  the 
husband  she  might  find  a  lover  who  for  dear  love's 
sake  would  treat  her  with  common  humanity. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  women  during  eighteen 
hundred  years  of  Christianity.  Legislated  for  as 
slaves,  imprisoned  for  crimes  that  if  committed  by  a 
man  were  only  punished  by  branding  the  hand;  buried 
alive  for  other  crimes  that  committed  by  men  were 
atoned  for  by  the  payment  of  a  fine;  denied  a  share 
in  the  government  of  the  family  or  the  church,  their 
very  sex  deemed  a  curse,  the  twentieth  century  is  now 
about  to  open    showing    no   truly   enlightened    nation 

25.  Journal  of  Jurisprudence,  Vol.  XVI.,  Edinburg,  1872. 

26.  Until  the  maiden  was  wedded  she  was  kept  strictly  under  control,  and  the 
kind  of  discipline  which  was  enforced  is  well  illustrated  by  a  letter  written  late 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  VI.  The  writer  was  the  widow  of  a  landholder,  and  she 
was  corresponding  with  the  brother  of  the  young  lady  whose  case  she  describes* 
and  whom  she  is  anxious  to  serve  by  finding  a  husband.  This  young  lady  was 
under  the  care  of  her  mother,  and  the  following  was  her  condition:  She  might 
not  speak  with  any  man,  not  even  her  mother's  servants;  and  she  had  since 
Easter  the  most  part  been  beaten  once  in  the  week,  or  twice,  and  sometimes 
thrice  in  a  day,  and  her  hand  was  broken  in  two  or  three  places.  Pike. — History 
of  Crime  in  England. 


308  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

upon  the  face  of  the  earth.  From  the  barbarism  of 
inhumanity  the  world  is  slowly  awakening  to  the  fact 
that  every  human  being  stands  upon  the  plane  of 
equal  natural  rights.  The  Church  has  not  taught  the 
world  this  great  truth,  the  State  has  not  conceded  it; 
its  acknowledgment  thus  far,  has  been  due  to  the  teach- 
ings of  individual  men  and  women,  that  self-constituted 
authority  ever  others  is  a  crime  against  humanity. 
Under  christian  teaching  regarding  woman,  the  daugh- 
ter was  looked  upon  as  a  more  remote  relative  and 
heir  than  the  son,  and  this  upon  the  ground  of  her 
inferiority.  Blackstone,  although  admitting  that  such 
views  did  not  pertain  in  Rome,  yet  speaks  of  males 
as  "the  worthier  of  blood."  Such  views  were  not 
held  by  pre-christian  Britain.  Under  common  law, 
before  that  country  accepted  Christianity,  property 
was  equally  divided  between  sisters,  and  only  by  spec- 
ial custom,  between  brothers.27  But  as  early  as 
Henry  II.  it  was  the  general  rule  that  a  woman  could 
not  share  an  inheritance  with  a  man.  An  exception 
sometimes  existed  in  a  particular  city  where  such  cus- 
tom had  long  prevailed. 

Until  quite  recently,  English  women  have  not  been 
permitted  to  express  an  opinion  upon  political  ques- 
tions, although  the  Primrose  League  and  other  similar 
organizations  have  effected  a  great  change  within  a  few 
years.  Yet  it  is  but  little  more  than  two  hundred 
years,  in  1664,  at  Henley  upon-Thames,  a  woman 
having  spoken  against  the  taxation  imposed  by  Parlia- 
ment, was  condemned  for  this  freedom  of  political 
criticism,  to  have  her  tongue  nailed  to  the  body  of  a 
tree  at  the  highway  side  upon  a  market  day,  and  a 
paper  fastened  to  her  back    detailing    the  heinousness 

27.  Britton.— Introduction,  p.  39.     Glanville.— De  Legibius  Anglica,  p.  158. 


WIVES  JOg 

of  her  offense.  It  was  thus  the  state  deterred  sfmilar 
politically-minded  women  from  the  expression  of  their 
views,  and  in  line  with  the  church  used  its  most  strin- 
gent measures  to  retain  woman  in  the  "sphere"  to 
which  both  church  and  state  assigned  her.  Many 
savage  tribes  of  Africa  exhibit  the  same  grade  of  civ- 
ilization that  was  extant  in  christian  England  from 
the  fourth  to  the  eighteenth  centuries. 

A  father  will  sell  his  daughter  among  Unyamwazi, 
Africa,  for  one  up  to  ten  cows.  A  Lomali  asks  of  a 
poor  wooer  from  ten  to  twenty  horses,  of  a  wealthy 
one  from  100  upward,  together  with  fifty  camels  and 
300  sheep.  On  the  other  hand,  in  Uganda,  four  oxen 
are  sufficient  to  buy  the  most  perfectly  formed  village 
belle,  provided  six  needles  and  a  box  of  catridges  are 
thrown  in. 

The  sale  is  the  same,  the  payment  alone  of  different 
character.  An  African  girl  in  case  of  a  wealthy  wooer, 
bringing  even  more  than  was  ordinarily  received  dur- 
ing the  middle  ages  for  an  English  christian  maiden. 
The  patriarchal  spirit  wherever  cropping  out  exhibiting 
the  same  characteristics,  whether  among  Jews,  Chris- 
tians, or  African  savages.  This  is  the  more  notable 
as  among  civilized  or  savage  races  yet  governed  by 
the  principles  of  the  Matriarchate,  the  position  of  wo- 
man is  very  high.  In  Samoa,  no  woman  is  compelled 
to  work,  all  labor  of  whatever  character  being  performed 
by  the  men.  The  celebrated  traveler,  Prof.  Carl  Lum- 
holz,  in  his  work  "Among  the  Cannibals,"  makes 
some  interesting  statements  in  regard  to  the  course 
adopted  by  the  natives  of  Georgia  River,  Australia, 
to  save  women  from  giving  birth  to  undesired  children, 
and  to  prevent  the  needless  suffering  and  infant  mortal- 
ity so  common  in  christian  lands. 

Among  the  methods  adopted    in  christian    countries 


3IO  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND   STATE 

for  a  continuance  of  the  crimes  common  in  the  mar- 
riage relation,  have  been  more  or  less  stringent  laws 
against  divorce,  ever  falling  with  heaviest  force  upon 
her  whom  christian  marriage  laws  have  made  a  slave. 
The  "Christian  Union"  declares  as  a  significant  act  of 
evil  import,  that  "in  Wyoming,  where  the  power  of 
woman  in  affairs  of  government  is  greatest,  one  di- 
vorce takes  place  in  every  six  marriages,  the  propor- 
tion being  greater  than  in  any  other  state."  But  if 
this  assertion  of  the  "Christian  Union"  is  true,  it  is 
proof  that  a  share  in  making  the  laws  which  govern 
her  is  wisely  used  by  the  women  of  that  state;  and  it 
marks  a  new  era  in  civilization,  when  woman  holding 
political  power  in  her  own  hands,  refuses  longer  to 
degrade  herself  by  living  in  a  relation  that  has  lost 
the  binding  power  of  love.  The  laws  of  church  and 
of  state  during  the  christian  ages  originated  with 
man,  and  it  is  a  promising  sign  of  woman's  growth 
in  self-reliance,  independent  thought,  and  purity  of 
character,  that  she  thus  protests  against  the  bondage 
of  a  relation  which  virtually  holds  the  wife  as  slave 
of  the  husband;  for  despite  the  changes  of  the  last  four 
and  a  half  decades,  we  still  find  the  general  tone  of 
legislation  in  line  with  the  church  teaching  of  woman's 
created  inferiority  to  man.  We  still  find  belief  in  the 
wife's  duty  of  obedience  to  the  husband;  we  still  dis- 
cover the  church,  the  state,  the  world,  all  regarding 
the  exercise  of  her  own  judgment  even  upon  the  ques- 
tions most  closely  related  to  herself  as  woman's  great- 
est sin.  As  free  as  woman  is  called  to-day,  she  has 
not  yet  as  daughter  secured  perfect  liberty  of  choice 
in  marriage,  the  power  of  the  family  too  often  com- 
pelling her  into  a  hated  relation.  Money  still  leads 
parents  to  prefer  one    suitor    above    another,  even    in 


WIVES  311 

the  United  States;  while  in  many  European  countries, 
marriages  are  arranged  by  friends,  or  through  a  broker, 
entirely  without  the  girl's  consent,  who  is  frequently 
taken  from  a  convent  or  school  to  be  thus  sold  to  some 
wealthy  and  perhaps  octogenarian  wooer,  who  covets 
the  youth  or  beauty  of  the  victim.28 

The  burning  of  twenty  missionaries  in  a  portion  of 
savage  Africa,  a  few  years  since,  filled  the  civilized 
world  with  horror.  But  for  several  hundred  years 
after  the  introduction  of  Christianity  into  Great  Brit- 
ian,the  penalty  for  simple  theft  by  a  woman  slave  was 
burning  alive,  and  all  the  other  women  slaves  were 
compelled  to  assist  at  her  auto-de-fi.  Upon  such  an 
occasion  mentioned  by  Pike,  eighty  other  women  each 
brought  a  log  of  wood  for  the  burning.2*  By  the 
old  Roman  Code,  burning  alive  as  a  punishment  was  for- 
bidden because  of  its  barbarity,  but  Christianity  re- 
introduced it,  and  for  long  centuries  after  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  Roman  Empire,  that  other  land  aspiring 
to  control  of  the  sea,  which  proudly  boasts  that  the  sun 
never  sets  on  her  possessions,  kept  it  in  her  criminal 
code   for    the    punishment   of  helpless    women.30     So 

28.  Doubtless  in  all  ages  marriages  were  by  far  oftener  determined  by  pecu- 
niary considerations  than  by  love  or  affection,  but  proofs  are  wanting  to  show 
that  marriage  was  formerly  made  an  object  of  speculation  and  exchange  in  the 
open  market  with  anything  like  the  same  sffrontery  as  to-day.  In  our  time 
among  the  propertied  classes— the  poor  have  no  need  of  it— marriage  barter  is 
frequently  carried  on  with  a  shamelessness  which  makes  the  phrases  about  the 
sacredness  of  marriage,  that  some  people  never  tire  of  repeating,  the  emptiest 
mockery.    August  Bebel. —  Woman  in  the  Past,  Present  and  Future. 

29.  To  make  women  the  special  objects  of  this  torture,  to  teach  them  hardness 
of  heart  in  the  office  of  executioners,  was  refinement  of  atrocity.  *  *  *  It 
was  for  slaves  and  women  that  the  greatest  atrocities  were  reserved. — Hist,  of 
Crime  in  England. 

30.  Women  in  England  had  burned  women  to  death  in  the  10th  century;  they 
had  been  set  on  the  stool  of  filth  to  be  mocked  as  brewers  of  bad  ale  in  the  nth; 
on  the  stool  of  filth  they  had  been  jeered  as  common  scolds  from  time  imme- 
morial; they  were  legally  beaten  by  their  husbands  down  to  a  comparatively  re- 
cent period.  In  the  14th  century  they  were  such  as  circumstances  had  made 
them;  strong  of  muscle  but  hard  of  heart,  more  fit  to  be  mothers  of  brigands  than 
to  rsar  gentle  daughters  or  honest  sons.— Ibid. 


312  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

rigorous  was  woman's  slavery  that  the  friendships  of 
women  with  each  other,  or  with  men,were  strictly  pro- 
hibited; yet  the  deep  affection  of  one  man  for  another 
to  whom  he  consecrated  his  life  and  fortune,  and  of 
whom  he  spoke  with  that  deep  tenderness,  was  highly 
commended.81  The  despotic,  irresponsible  power 
of  husbands  in  christian  England  at  this  period  is 
shown  by  the  diverse  manner  in  which  the  murder  of 
a  wife  by  a  husband,  or  a  husband  by  a  wife,  was 
regarded.  For  a  husband  to  murder  a  wife  either 
by  his  own  hands  or  those  of  a  hired  assassin,  was  of 
frequent  occurrence,  but  as  she  was  his  slave  over 
whom  he  had  power  of  life  and  death,  this  was  looked 
upon  as  a  trivial  affair.  But  under  the  laws  of  both 
church  and  state,  the  murder  of  a  husband  by  a  wife 
was  regarded  as  petty  treason,  to  be  punished  with 
the  utmost  severity,  burning  alive  being  a  not  uncom- 
mon form.82 

Under  christian  legislation  not  alone  the  wife's 
person  but  her  property  so  fully  became  her  husband's 
that  her  use  of  any  portion  of  it  thereafter  without  his 
consent  was  regarded  as  theft;  and  such  is  still  the 
law  in  the  majority  of  christian  countries;  it  is  less 
than  sixty  years  since  a  change  in  this  respect  took 
place  in  any  part  of  the  christian  world.  While  a 
wife  may  steal  from  her  husband  it  is  still  the  law 
that  a  husband  cannot  steal  from  his  wife.  If  she 
allows  him  to  transact  business  for  her,  or  in  any  way 

31.  The  elder  Disraeli  says:  "Warton,  too,  has  observed  that  the  style  of 
friendship  between  males  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  would  not  be  tolerated  at  the 
present  day."  Disraeli  himself  declares  that  "a  male  friend,  whose  life  and  for- 
tunes were  consecrated  to  another  male,  who  looks  upon  him  with  adoration  and 
talks  of  him  with  excessive  tenderness,  appears  to  us  nothing  less  than  a  chimeri- 
cal and  monstrous  lover." — Amenities  of  Literature,  Vol.  II.,  p.  105. 

32.  Poisoning  or  otherwise  murdering  husbands  was  a  crime  visited  with 
peculiar  severity  in  almost  all  codes.    I^ea.—  Superstition  and  Force. 


WIVES  313 

obtain  possession  of  her  property  even  for  a  moment, 
he  has  acquired  its  legal  ownership.  Since  the  pass- 
age of  the  Married  Woman's  Property  Act,  the  courts 
of  England  have  decided  that  a  husband  cannot  steal 
from  his  wife  while  she  is  living  with  him.  A  case 
before  Baron  Huddleston,  1888,  commented  upon  by 
the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  under  head  of  "Stealing 
from  a  Wife,"  called  attention  to  the  superior  posi- 
tion of  the  mistress  in  respect  to  property  rights  over 
that  of  the  wife. 

Can  a  husband  rob  his  wife?  Baron  Huddleston 
yesterday  answered  this  by  saying  he  can  not  rob 
her  at  all  under  the  common  law,  which  regards  all 
the  wife's  property  as  the  husband's;  and,  theft 
is  only  robbery  under  the  Married  Women's  Property 
Act,  when  the  wife  is  living  apart  from  her  husband, 
or  when  he  is  preparing  to  desert  her.  It  is  really 
quite  amazing  how  many  advantages  a  mistress  has 
over  a  wife  in  all  matters  relating  to  property  and  to 
person.  It  almost  seems  as  if  the  object  of  the  law 
was  to  inflict  such  disabilities  on  wives  in  order  to 
induce  the  fair  sex  to  prefer  concubinage  to  matri- 
mony. 

The  separate  moral  codes  for  man  and  woman  in 
all  christian  lands,  show  their  evil  aspect  in  many 
ways.  Adultery,  in  all  christian  countries  is  held  to 
be  less  sinful  for  men  than  for  women.  In  England, 
while  the  husband  can  easily  obtain  a  divorce  from 
the  wife  upon  the  ground  of  adultery,  it  is  almost  im- 
possible for  the  wife  to  obtain  a  divorce  from  the 
husband  upon  the  same  ground.  Nothing  short  of 
the  husband's  bringing  another  woman  into  the  house 
to  sustain  wifely  relations  to  him,  at  all  justifies  her  in 
proceedings  for  a  separation;  and  even  then,  the  hus- 
band retains  a  right  to  all  the  wife's  property  of  which 
he  was  in  possession,  or  which  may  have   fallen    into 


314  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

his  hands.  Less  than  a  dozen  years  since,  an  English 
husband  willed  his  wife's  property  to  his  mistress  and 
her  children  of  whom  he  was  the  father.  The  wife, 
(in  what  is  known  as  "The  Birchall  Case"),  contested 
the  will,  but  the  courts  not  only  decided  in  its  favor, 
but  added  insult  to  that  legal  robbery,  by  telling  the 
wife  that  a  part  of  her  money  was  enough  for  her,  and 
that  she  ought  to  be  willing  that  her  husband's  mis- 
tress and  illegitimate  children  should  share  it  with 
her. 

Woman's  disobedience  to  man  is  regarded  by  both 
the  church  and  the  state  as  disobedience  to  God. 
As  late  as  the  first  half  of  the  present  century  it  was 
held  as  constructive  treason,  in  England,  punishable 
by  the  state,  for  a  wife  to  refuse  obedience  to  her  hus- 
band's commands  or  in  any  way  to  question  his  au- 
thority. She  was  required  to  be  under  submission  to 
him  as  the  direct  representative  of  the  deity.  For 
the  woman  who  protested  against  this  annihilation  of 
her  individuality,  a  flogging  was  the  customary  form 
of  punishment  and  so  common  was  the  use  of  the  whip 
that  its  size  was  regulated  by  law/3  The  punish- 
ment of  petit  treason34  was  more  severe  for  woman 
than  for  man  because  her  crime  was  regarded  as  of  a 
more  heinous  character.  She  was  dragged  on  the 
ground  or  pavement  to  the  place  of  execution  then 
burned  alive;  a  man  was  drawn  and  hanged.  It  was 
long  after  the   conquest  before  even  a  man  convicted 

33.  Blackstone  says  it  was  to  be  no  thicker  than  a  man's  thumb,  thus  an  in- 
strument of  ever  varying  size.  According  to  palmistry  the  thumb  of  a  self-willed 
or  obstinate  man,  a  cruel  man,  or  of  a  murderer,  is  very  large  at  the  upper  por- 
tion or  ball. 

34.  Petit  treason  may  happen  in  three  ways:  By  a  servant  killing  his  master;  a 
wife  her  husband,  or  an  ecclesiastical  person  (either  secular  or  regular)  his 
superior,  to  whom  he  owes  faith  and  obedience.  The  punishment  of  petit  treason 
in  a  man  is  to  be  drawn  and  hanged,  and  in  a  woman  to  be  drawn  and  burnt.— 
Commentaries,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  203-4. 


WIVES  315 

of  treason  secured  the  right  of  being  carried  to  exe- 
cution on  a  sledge  or  hurdle.  Blackstone  comments 
upon  the  extreme  torment  of  being  dragged  on  the 
ground  or  pavement.  In  case  of  a  woman  the  wounds 
and  lacerations"  thus  received  must  have  greatly  added 
to  her  intensity  of  suffering,  yet  so  blinded  was  he 
through  those  laws,  that  he  calls  her  punishment  of 
burning,  a  tribute  to  the  'decency  due  to  the    sex.,S5 

During  a  portion  of  the  christian  era  the  wife  has 
not  been  looked  upon  as  related  to  her  husband.  The 
residuum  of  this  disbelief  in  the  relationship  of  hus- 
band and  wife,  occasionally  shows  itself  to  the  present 
day.3*  She  was  his  slave  under  both  religious  and 
civil  law,  holding  the  same  relations  to  him  as  the 
subject  did  to  the  king,  and  liable  to  punishments 
similar  to  those  inflicted  upon  unruly  slaves,  or  disloyal 
subjects.  Rebellion  against  the  husband's  authority 
was  treason  punishable  by  law,  similarly  as  treason  to 
the  king.  The  difference  was  but  in  name.  Down  to 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  England,  the 
wife  who  had  murdered  her  husband  was  burned  alive; 
if  the  husband  murdered  his  wife  he  suffered  simple 
decapitation,  "the  same  as  if  he  had  murdered  any 
other  stranger."  For  the  wife's  crime  of  petit  treason 
the  penalty  was  that  of  the  slave  who  had  killed  her 
master.     It  is  scarcely  a  hundred  years  since  the  pun- 

35.  But  in  treason  of  every  kind  the  punishment  of  women  is  the  same  and 
different  from  men.  For  as  the  decency  due  to  the  sex  forbids  the  exposing  and 
publicly  mangling  their  bodies,  their  sentence  is  to  be  drawn  (dragged)  to  the  gal- 
lows and  there  be  burnt  alive. — Ibid,  IV.,  p.  92. 

36.  The  daily  press,  in  its  minute  record  of  events,  all  unwittingly  furnishes 
many  a  little  item,  whose  primal  reason  only  the  student  of  history  can  read- 
The  Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  "Daily  Standard,"  of  February  22,  1884,  published  from  its 
exchanges  the  following  incident: 

"An  eccentric  old  man  in  New  Hampshire  surprised  his  neighbors  and  friends 
the  other  day  by  shouldering  his  gun  and  starting  for  the  woods  on  the  mornin  g 
of  his  wife's  funeral.  On  being  urged  to  come  back,  he  refused,  saying:  "She 
warn't  no  blood  relation  of  mine." 


3l6  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

ishment  of  burning  the  wife  alive  for  the  murder  of  her 
husband,  or  the  female  slave  for  the  murder  of  her 
master,  as  petit  treason,  passed  out  of  the  English 
penal  code;  the  last  instance  occurring  in  1784,  eight 
years  after  our  declaration  of  independence.  This 
same  code  was  operative  in  the  colonies;  the  last 
woman  thus  punished  in  this  country,  being  a  slave 
in  1755,  wno  nad  murdered  her  master,  America  hav- 
ing twenty-nine  years  precedence  in  the  abolition  of 
this  penalty.37 

A  cablegram  from  Europe,  September  1892,  proves 
the  continued  existence  in  this  last  decade  of  the 
nineteenth  century  of  the  crime  of  petit  treason,  and 
also  the  barbarous  punishment  still  inflicted  under 
christian  law,  upon  the  wife  who  murders  her  hus- 
band. This  case,  occurring  in  Finland,  was  carried 
up  to  the  Court  of  Appeals,  which  not  only  affirmed 
the  decision  of  the  lower  court  but  decreed  additional 
punishment.  Because  the  wife  had  also  forged  her 
husband's  name  for  small  sums  of  money,  having, 
under  law,  first  been  robbed  by  him  of  her  earnings, 
the  judgment  of  having  her  right  hand  cut  off,  was 
added  to  the  original  sentence.  She  was  then  decapi- 
tated, her  body  fastened  to  a  stake,  covered  with  in- 
flammable material  and  burned  to  ashes.  Although 
this  wife  was  not  burned  alive,  the  barbarity  of  her 
punishment  was  most  atrocious,  and  took  place  under 
the  christian  laws  of  the  church  and  the  state,  in  a 
Protestant  country  in  the  "year  of  our  Lord,"  1892. 
That  the  punishment  was  infinitely  more  severe  than 
would    have    been  inflicted  upon    the  husband  in  case 

37.  But  now  by  the  statute  30,  George  3  c,  48  women  convicted  in  all 
cases  of  treason  shall  receive  judgment  to  be  drawn  to  the  place  of  execution, 
and  there  to  be  hanged  by  the  neck  till  dead.  Before  this  humane  statute  women 
were  sentenced  to  be  burnt  alive  for  every  species  of  treason.— Commentaries,  p.92. 


WIVES  317 

he  had  murdered  his  wife,  was  due  to  christian  teach- 
ing of  woman's  inferiority  and  subordination  to  man; 
thus  making  the  wife's  crime  that  of  petit  treason, 
under  law  only  a  trifle  less  heinous  than  murdering  a 
king,  or  attempting  destruction  of  the  government. 
Had  the  husband  murdered  the  wife  it  would  have 
been,  according  to  legal  prevision,  the  same  as  if  he 
had  killed  "any  other  stranger"  The  marriage  cere- 
mony robbed  her  of  her  property  and  earnings,  but  in 
equity  the  money  she  was  accused  of  stealing  from 
him  belonged  to  her.  Under  the  laws  of  most  chris- 
tian states,  a  woman  is  robbed  of  herself  and  all  of  her 
possessions  by  the  simple  fact  of  her  marriage.  Un- 
der christian  law,  the  services  of  the  wife  in  the  mar- 
ital relation  are  all  due  to  the  husband,38  her  earn- 
ings all  belong  to  him;  she  is  a  slave  owning  nothing 
and  with  no  rights  in  the  property  her  husband  calls 
his  own.  This  wife's  crime  was  provoked  by  pre-ex- 
isting ciminal  legislation  of  the  christian  church  and 
state.  Possessing  no  legal  right  to  the  control  of 
her  own  person,  property  or  conscience,  the  wife  was 
held  to  have  sinned  against  a  divinely  appointed  mas- 
ter to  whom  she  owed  more  than  human  allegiance: 
she  was  a  criminal  so  great  that  the  punisment  of  sev- 
ering her  hand  and  head  were  deemed  entirely  inade- 
quate, and  her  body  fastened  to  a  stake  was  covered 
with  inflammable  material  and  burned  to  ashes.89 

38.  See  decision  New  York  Court  0/ Appeals \  January,  1892. 

39.  St.  Petersburg,  September  22  —In  April  last  Mrs.  Aina  Sainio,  wife  of  a 
professor  in  the  State  College  at  Travasteheuse,  Finland,  was  found  guilty  of 
poisoning  her  husband,  and  in  accordance  with  the  medissval  law,  which  is  still 
in  force  there,  she  was  sentenced  to  be  beheaded,  and  her  body  to  be  affixed  to  a 
beacon  and  burned.  It  was  charged  that  Mrs.  Sainio  had  been  unfaithful  to  her 
husband,  carrying  on  a  liaison  with  one  of  the  students  at  the  college.  She  stren- 
uously denied  this,  and  said  her  motive  in  killing  her  husband  was  to  get  the  insur- 
ance of  $2,500  on  his  life  as  she  was  deeply  in  debt.  The  case  was  carried  to  the 
Court  of  Appeals  and  to-day  a  decision  was  handed  down  affirming  the  judgment 


3l8  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

While  the  external  government  of  Finland,  as  dec- 
larations of  war,  peace,  treaties,  etc.,  is  under  control 
of  the  Czar,  or  Grand  Duke,  yet  in  the  internal  ad- 
ministration of  affairs  this  country  is  an  Independent 
State,  under  a  Constitution  dating  1772,  and  confirmed 
by  three  successive  czars.  It  became  christianized  in 
the  twelfth  century  but  is  not  under  the  Greek  church; 
its  established  religion  is  Evangelical  and  Lutheran, 
under  control  of  the  arch-bishop  of  Abo,  and  the  bish- 
ops of  Bogia  and  Knopo;  an  ecclesiastical  assembly 
meeting  every  ten  years;  and  the  Diet,  composed  of 
representatives  of  the  clergy,  nobility,  citizens  and 
peasants,  every  five  years.  Without  consent  of  these 
bodies  no  laws  are  enacted  or  repealed;  but  woman 
possesses  no  representation  either  in  ecclesiastical  or 
civil  affairs. 

The  old  law  of  marriage  instituted  by  the  church, 
which  held  the  wife  as  belonging  body  and  soul  to 
the  husband  who  not  alone  possessed  control  over  her 
actions  but  decided  her  religion,  is  still  extant.  In  but 
few  countries  do  we  see  a  tendency  towards  its  aboli- 
tion, even  those  that  have  somwehat  favorably  legis- 
lated upon  the  question,  still  retaining  the  general 
principle  of  a  wife's  subserviency  to  her  husband. 
A  few  years  since  an  English  lady  desirous  of  unit- 
ing with  the  Catholic  church  was  refused  consent  by 
her  husband,  "a  staunch  churchman."  Unknown  to 
him  she  was  received  into  that  body,  which  proved 
occasion  of  an  animated  controversy  between  the  hus- 
band and  the  late  Cardinal  Manning,  the    former  bas- 

of  the  trial  court  and  adding  to  the  punishment.  It  transpired  during  the  trial 
that  Mrs.  Sainio  had  forged  her  husband's  name  to  checks  for  small  sums  some 
time  before  his  death,  and  for  this  offense  the  Court  of  Appeals  ordered  that  her 
right  hand  be  cut  off.  Then  she  will  be  decapitated,  her  body  fastened  to  a 
stake  covered  with  inflammable  material  and  set  on  fire. 


WIVES  319 

ing  his  opposition    and    his  letter  of    remonstrance  to 
the   cardinal  upon  the    ground  of    the  admitted    legal 
right  of  a  husband,  under  English  law,  to    ordain  the 
form    of   his    wife's    religion.40     Nor    do    we  find  ma- 
terial difference  in  the    United   States.      In    Virginia, 
in  the   winter  of  1891,  a  wife,  despite   the  opposition 
of  her  husband,  caused   her    infant   to  be    baptized  by 
an  Episcopal  clergyman  into  that  church,  the  husband 
openly  expressing  his  disapproval  while  the  ceremony 
was  in  progress,    and   afterwards    suing  the  clergyman 
for  an  interference  with    his    vested  rights    over  wife 
and  child.     This  supreme  authority  of  the  husband  in 
christian  countries    is  shown    in    many    strange    ways. 
Among  the  Hindoos  the   naming  of    the  child  belongs 
to  the  mother.     If  the    father    expresses    desire    for  a 
different  name,  each  one  is  written  upon  a  paper  over 
which    lighted    lamps    are    set,  the    one    burning  the 
longest  deciding  the  choice  of  name.      But    in   Rhode 
Island  as  late  as  1892,  a   controversy   between  the  pa- 
rents as  to  the  naming  of  a  child  was  settled  by   law. 
The  father  and    mother    each    filed    a  certificate  with 
the  registrar;   the   father    employing  a    lawyer  who  to 
the  satisfaction  of  the  city  solicitor  proved  his  client's 
prior  right,  and  an   order  was   issued  to  the    registrar 
in  favor  of  the   father's   choice    of   name.41     The  claim 
of  the  christian    husband  in    each  of    these    instances 
was  that  of  his  supreme  and  prior  right,  on  the  church 
theory  incorporated  into  law,  that  both  wife  and  child 
belong  to    the  husband.     The    celebrated    Agar-Ellis 
case  in  England  during    the  latter    part  of   the  seven- 
ties, was  brought  by  a  wife  to  compel  the  keeping  by 
a  husband  of  his    pledges  in    regard    to  the    religious 
education  of  his  children.      The  decision    was  against 

40.  Reported  in  the  "London  Telegraph* 

41.  Telegraphic  Report  from  Providence,  R.  1  ,  September  24,  i8ga. 


3*°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  wife,  upon  the  general  ground  that  a  wife  had  no 
rights  in  law  as  against  a  husband.  A  man's  pledged 
word  broken  at  the  gaming  table  renders  him  infa- 
mous and  subjects  him  to  dishonor  through  life.  But 
a  husband's  pledged  word  broken  to  his  wife,  under 
ruling  of  the  highest  court  and  the  profoundest  legal 
talent  of  England,  the  Court  of  Appeals,  and  the 
Vice-Chancellor,  is  just,  implying  no  dishonor,  but 
rather  entitling  him  to  respect  as  a  man  who  in  a 
befitting  manner  has  maintained  his  marital  rights 
and  authority.  The  judge  instructed  the  wife  that  she 
had  no  right  to  teach  her  children  what  her  husband 
did  not  believe,  even  though  she  herself  most  fully 
believed  what  she  taught.  He  impressed  upon  her  that 
she  was  not  rearing  her  children  for  herself,  but  as 
her  husband's  property,  over  which  she  possessed  no 
control  only  in  so  far  as  the  husband  made  her  his 
agent.  In  affirming  the  order  of  the  Vice-Chancellor, 
the  court  of  appeals  declared  that  the  father  had  the 
legal  right  to  bring  up  the  children  in  his  own  faith, 
and  in  pledging  his  word  to  the  contrary  he  had  in  no 
way  forfeited  or  abandoned  his  authority.  This  decision 
of  the  English  Court  of  Appeals,  is  in  accord  with  the 
laws  of  the  United  States.  The  Albany  N.  Y.  "Law 
Journal"  in  commenting  upon  this  case  under  the  head 
of  "Curious  Question,"  declared  the  decision  to  be  in 
harmony  with  the  general  rule  as  to  religious  educa- 
tion; the  child  is  to  be  educated  in  the  religion  of  the 
father. 

The  "English  Women's  Suffrage  Journal"  in  its 
comments,  declared  English  law  to  be  based  upon  the 
Koran,  quoting,  in  proof,  from  a  writer  in  the  "Con- 
temporary Review": 

The  East  has  long  been  noted  for  the  subordination 


WIVES  321 

of  its  women,  and  this  subjection  is  not  only  preached 
by  Mussulmans  and  Buddhists  but  even  by  Christian 
churches.  Woman  is  not  regarded  as  a  person  but 
as  a  field,  cultivable  or  not,  as  the  possessor  desires. 
As  a  field  can  neither  have  faith,  nor  intellect,  nor  a 
will  of  its  own,  it  would  be  absurd  for  a  man  to  occupy 
himself  about  what  a  woman  believes,  thinks,  or 
wishes.  She  is  absolutely  nothing  but  her  husband's 
domain.  He  cultivates  it  and  reaps  the  harvest,  for 
the  harvest  belongs  to  the  proprietor. 

According  to  the  "Women's  Suffrage  Journal,"  this 
condition  accurately  depicted  the  spirit  of  the  injunc- 
tion laid  upon  Mrs.  Agar-Ellis,  by  Lord  Justice  James. 

To  the  wife  and  mother  he  declared  that  she  had 
no  right  to  teach  her  children  what  she  believed,  but 
must,  to  the  contrary,  teach  them  what  her  husband 
believed,  whether  she  believed  it  or  not;  the  law  not 
concerning  itself  with  what  a  woman  believes,  or 
wishes,  as  she  is  in  law  absolutely  nothing  but  her 
husband's  domain. 

The  mistake  of  the  "Journal"  lies  in  ascribing  this 
law  to  the  teachings  of  the  Koran,  instead  of  the 
teachings  of  the  Bible,  which  in  general  tone,  and 
through  particular  instruction,  places  woman  upon  the 
same  level  as  a  man's  "flocks  and  herds,  oxen  and 
cattle."  We  do  not  find  the  personal  rights  of  women 
in  the  United  States  differing  from  those  of  the  wo- 
men of  England.  A  famous  suit  was  tried  in  Ohio, 
1879,  known  as  the  "Lucy  Walker  Case,"  a  former 
wife  sueing  the  present  wife  for  alienating  her  hus- 
band's affections.  Great  attention  was  called  to  this 
suit  from  the  high  position  of  the  parties;  Judge  Seney, 
former    husband     of    one,    and    present    husband42    of 

42.  Mrs.  Judge  Seney's  trouble. — A  deserted  wife  suing  the  woman  who  en- 
ticed her  husband  away  from  her. 

Tiffin,  O.,  February  14.— Judge  Dodge  gave  his  decision  yesterday  in  the 
novel  case  of  the  former  Mrs.  George  E.  Seney  against  the  present  Mrs.  George 
E.  Seney.    Judge  Seney  is  one  of  the  well  known  lawyers  of  Ohio,  and  author  of 


322  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  other  wife,  being  widely  kown  as  author  of  a  "Civil 
Code,"  bearing  his  name.  The  suit  gained  still 
greater  notoriety  from  the  principle  enunciated  in  his 
decision  rendered  against  the  plantiff,  by  Judge  Dodge, 
before  whom  the  case  came  to  trial;  he  dismissed  it 
upon  the  ground  that  a  wife  had  no  rights  as  against 
her  husband.  All  testimony  upon  part  of  the  injured 
first  wife  was  excluded  upon  the  same  ground.  He 
decided: 

First:  That  the  husband  has  a  property  interest  in 
his  wife  which  the  wife  does  not  possess  in  the  hus- 
band. 

Second:  That  the  law  protects  him  in  this  right  of 
property  in  her. 

Third;  Upon  the  ground  that  he  holds  her  and  dares 
the  world  to  meddle  with  him  in  the  holding. 

Fourth;  But  on  the  contrary  the  wife  looks  alone  to 
the  husband,  the  law  compelling  her  to  do  so. 

Thus  less  than  fifteen  years  since,  the  legal  decision 
was  rendered  in  the  United  States,  that  a  wife  is  a 
husband's  property;  that  the  husband  has  a  pecuniary 
interest  in  the  wife,  the  law  protecting  his  right  of 
property  in  her,  while  the  wife  possesses  no  reciprocal 
right  of  property  in  the  husband. 

The  "Toledo  Bee"  gave  the  full  text  of  Judge 
Dodge's  decision: 

The  question  submitted  is  this:  Has  a  wife  such  a 
property  in  her  husband,  has  she  such  a  legal  pecu- 
niary interest  in  him,  that  she  can  bring  an  action  at 
law  against    one  who    injures  him,    against   one  who 

a  "Civil  Code"  that  bears  his  name.  He  married  his  first  wife,  Mrs.  Anna 
Seney,  in  1858,  and  for  fourteen  years  they  lived  happily  together.  At  about  that 
time  Mrs.  Seney  and  Miss.  Walker  became  very  intimate  friends,  and  continued 
to  be  »o  until,  as  is  alleged,  Mrs.  Seney  ascertained  that  Miss  Walker  was  under- 
mining the  affections  of  her  husband.  A  separation  between  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Seney  soon  followed,  and  subsequently  the  Judge  married  Miss  Walker.  Mrs. 
Seney,  therefore,  instituted  a  suit  against  her  successor,  claiming  damages  to  the 
amount  of  f  10,000  for  the  seduction  of  her  husband.— "New  York    Sun," 


WIVES  323 

imprisons  him,  and,  finally,  can  a  wife  recover  dam- 
ages at  law  against  a  woman  who  has  carnal  intercourse 
with  her  husband  without  her  consent?  It  will  be  at 
once  admitted  that  the  question  is  a  novel  one.  Our 
courts  adjudicate  primarily  upon  property  interests. 
A  husband  has  a  pecuniary,  a  property  interest  in  his 
wife.     The  law  protects  this  right  of  property. 

A  father  can  recover  damages  against  a  man  who 
seduces  his  daughter,  but  a  mother  can  not  recover 
for  the  seduction  of  a  daughter.  Why  not?  Is  she 
not  as  dear  to  the  mother  as  the  father?  Nay,  dearer, 
by  as  much  as  a  mother's  love  exceeds  a  father's. 
But  she  has  not  property  in  her,  is  not  entitled  to  her 
wages;  neither  is  a  mother  bound  to  support  her  child- 
ren. The  father  is  the  head  of  the  family,  not  the 
mother.  He,  by  virtue  of  his  headship,  is  legally  en- 
titled to  the  services  of  his  family.  The  husband  is 
head  of  the  wife;  not  the  wife  of  the  husband. 

But  can  a  husband  sue  his  wife  if  she  refuses  to  sup- 
port him  out  of  her  property,  to  give  him  her  earnings, 
or  keep  her  marriage  contract?  Not  at  all.  Can  a 
father  sue  his  minor  child  that  refuses  him  obedience 
and  service?  Not  at  all.  And  why  is  this?  For  the 
same  reason  that  he  cannot  sue  his  flocks  or  his  herds, 
his  oxen  and  his  cattle — they  are  his.  His  to  com- 
mand. He  is  reponsible  for  and  to  them.  He  cannot 
sue  his  own.  He  can  sue  any  one  who  takes  them 
away;  any  one  who  keeps  or  harbors  them;  any  one  who 
injures  them;  because  they  are  his  own.  But  the  wife 
does  not  own  her  husband;  the  child  does  not  own  the 
father,  and,  therefore,  I  hold  that  the  child  cannot  sue 
for  an  injury  to  the  father,  nor  the  wife  for  an  injury 
to  the  husband.  There  is  in  her  no  property  right 
upon  which  to  found  the  action.  My  conviction  is 
that  the  wife  looks  to  her  husband  alone  for  the  ful- 
fillment of  his  marriage  vows.  If  he  refuses  her  the 
support,  protection  and  love  which  he  pledged  her, 
she  applies  to  a  court  to  enforce  the  claim  against 
him.  Every  dollar  he  has,  every  penny  of  his  earn- 
ings,  all  his  arm  can  gain  or  his  intellect  can  attain 
are  subject  to  her  right.     But   she    looks  to    her  hus- 


324  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

band  alone,  the  law  compels  her  to  do  so.  The  hus- 
band enforces  his  claim  to  his  wife  by  striking  down 
every  one  who  interferes  with  his  right  to  her.  He 
holds  her  and  dares  the  world  to  meddle  with  her. 
The  law  protects  him  in  holding.  The  law  gives  cour- 
age to  his  heart,  strength  to  his  arm  in  defending  his 
position.  But  the  wife  looks  to  the  husband.  She 
relies  upon  his  pledge  and  his  promise,  which  the  law 
will  enforce,  and  she  looks  to  that  alone.  The  law 
does  not  permit  her  to  go  forth  to  smite  the  seducer  of 
her  husband,  nor  the  man  or  woman  who  entices  him 
away. 

But  as  showing  the  rapid  growth  of  public  opinion 
in  favor  of  the  wife's  equality  of  right  with  the  hus- 
band, through  the  presistent  rebellion  of  woman 
against  established  laws  and  usages  of  Church  and 
States,  thus  forcing  an  advancing  civilization  upon 
the  world,  was  a  decision  rendered  1891,  twelve  years 
later,  in  the  state  of  Indiana.  The  case  was  that  of 
Leah  Haynes,  plaintiff,  against  Flora  Knowles,  de- 
fendant; a  suit  similar  in  character  to  the  "Lucy 
Walker  Case."  Judge  Elliot  in  Supreme  Court  of 
that  State,  on  appeal  from  the  decision  of  the  Circuit 
Court  of  Dearborn  County,  reversed  the  finding  of  the 
lower  court,  deciding  in  favor  of  the  right  of  a  wife 
to  sue  for  the  alienation  of  her  husband's  affections. 
This  decision,  so  contrary  to  common  law,  and  to  or- 
dinary christian  legislation  for  woman,  is  proof  of  an 
advancing  civilization  which  does  not  look  to  the 
church  for  approval.  Court  decisions  of  this  character 
establishing  a  precedent,  are  of  far  greater  value  in  de- 
monstrating the  growth  of  a  purer  public  sentiment, 
than  are  simple  legislative  victories  upon  school  or 
municipal  questions.  They  speak  even  more  clearly 
than  do  the  host  of  newly  opened  industries,  freer  op- 
portunities for  education,  married    woman's    property 


WIVES  325 

laws  and  similar  legislation,  of  a  growing  recognition 
of  woman's  personal  rights,  and  of  a  civilization  found- 
ed upon  the  common  rights  of  humanity,  and  no  longer 
upon  church  authority. 

The  general  spirit  and  letter  of  the  christian  laws 
of  husband  and  wife  was  most  fully  carried  out  by  a 
husband  of  the  state  of  Missouri  a  few  years  since. 
Mrs.  Olive  Davenport  of  St.  Louis,  suing  for  a  di- 
vorce, upon  the  ground  that  her  husband  required  her 
to  obey  him  in  all  things.  "Davenport's  rules  for  his 
Wife"  were  offered  in  evidence. 

Rules  for  the  Government  of  my  Wife's  Conduct 

WHILE   AWAY   FROM  ME,  June    I,    1879: 

First-.  Not  to  speak  to  any  person  or  allow  any 
person  to  speak  to  her  on  the  car  except  the 
conductor  and  porter  in  the  discharge  of  their 
duty. 

Second-.  Go  directly  from  depot  in  New  York,  to 
Mrs.  Haight's  house,  and  occupy  room  with  mother 
and  sleep  only  in  room. 

Third-.  Speak  kindly  and  politely  to  Mrs.  Haight, 
but  not  in  a  friendly  or  familiar  manner.  Say  to  her  you 
do  not  wish  to  meet  any  one  in  the  house.  Ask  for 
a  table  to  yourself,  with  only  your  family  or  go  some- 
where else. 

Fourth  :  Never  sing  in  the  parlor  or  sing  in  your 
room  when  any  person  except  your  immediate  family 
be  present. 

Fifth:     Never    leave   mother  day   or   night  for    five 
minutes  at  a  time  for  any  reason  whatsoever.      Do  not 
walk,  ride,  or   go    anywhere    without   her,  even    with 
your  own  brother. 

Sixth:  Do  not  call  on  any  person  whatsoever,  and 
allow  no  one  who  may  call  on  you  to  see  you  unless 
they  be  your  brothers  or  their  wives.  Do  not  speak 
to  any  person  you  may  meet  whom  you  have  not  known 
in  the  past. 

Seventh:     Write   every  night    to  me  a    full,  truthful 


326  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

and  exact  account  of  everything  you  have  done,  where 
you  have  been,  to  whom  you  have  spoken,  and  whom 
you  have  seen.     This  must  be  done  every  night. 

Let  nothing  but  sickness  or  death  prevent  your 
keeping  these  rules,  for  I  will  excuse  no  breach  on 
any  account. 

Do  not  leave  New  York  even  for  one  hour  with- 
out my  permission,  except  to  Brooklyn  or  Har- 
lem. 

If  my  wife  cannot  keep  these  rules  in  word  and 
spirit,  I  desire  never  to  see  her  again. 

Benjamin  R.  Davenport. 

The  divorce  suit  showed  the  married  pair  to  have 
been  separated  once  before,  Mrs.  Davenport,  unable 
to  bear  her  husband's  tyranny,  returning  to  her 
mother's  house.  At  that  time  her  husband  required 
her  to  eat  only  what  he  directed,  and  to  wear  only 
those  clothes  he  bade  her  wear,  selecting  even  the 
color  of  her  ribbons.  The  only  fault  he  had  to  find 
with  her  was  that  she  "talked  back,"  which  has  always 
been  deemed  an  unpardonable  crime  in  woman;  one 
for  which  the  Ducking  Stool  and  Scold's  Bridle  were 
invented.  After  she  left  him,  Mr.  Davenport  wrote 
affectionate  letters  to  his  wife,  calling  her  the  sweet- 
est and  best  of  women,  imploring  her  to  return.  She 
relented  and  lived  with  him  once  more,  but  hor  hus- 
band again  put  his  rules  in  force.  She  then  sued  for 
a  divorce,  which  the  court  granted.  Mr.  Davenport's 
treatment  of  his  wife  is  by  no  means  exceptional.  The 
following  excerpt  is  from  a  letter  in  the  Terra  Haute, 
lnd.,  Mail,  1884. 

An  individual  who  considers  himself  a  representative 
man  in  the  city,  and  perhaps  he  is,  said  in  the  presence 
of  several  persons.  "I  went  home  at  three  o'clock 
this  morning  and  found  my  wife  sitting  up.  She  burst 
into  tears  and  asked  me  where  I  had  been  and  why  I 


WIVES  327 

treated  her  in  that  manner?  I  ju^t  told  her  if  she  said 
another  word  I  would  leave  the  house ;  that  as  long  as 
she  had  a  comfortable  home  where  she  could  spend  her 
evenings  it  was  none  of  her  business  where  I  spent 
mine.  Now,  if  I  did  not  provide  for  my  family,  it 
would  be  a  different  thing  but  so  long  as  my  wife  is 
well  provided  for,  she  has  no  right  to  complain  and  I 
don't  propose  to  allow  it."  These  are  the  man's  own 
words,  and  there  are  a  great  many  men  who  hold  the 
same  opinions.  If  their  wives  protest  because  they 
drink,  gamble  and  spend  their  nights  away,  they  say. 
"You  have  a  good  home  and  enough  to  eat  and  wear ; 
what  more  do  you  want?" 

A  lady  of  Richmond,  Va.,  anxious  to  know  from  a 
legal  source  just  what  her  rights  as  a  wife  were,  con- 
sulted a  lawyer  of  that   city. 

"Well,  Madam,"  he  replied,  head  thrown  back, 
thumbs  in  armholes  :  "Well,  Madam,  you  have  a  right 
to  comfortable  food  ;  a  fire  to  keep  you  warm,  and 
two  calico  dresses  a  year.  These  are  your  legal  rights; 
all  beyond  these  are  the  gifts  of  your  husband.  Lux- 
uries of  food  and  clothing,  journeys  and  books,  these 
are  not  yours  by  law;  it  remains  with  your  husband 
to  decide  whether  he  will  furnish  them  to  you  or 
not. " 

And  this  is  Christian  civilization  for  woman  at  the 
close  of  the  nineteenth  century  of  this  era. 

Although  married  women  of  the  State  of  New  York 
have  enjoyed  certain  property  rights  since  1848,  sub- 
sequent legislation  in  various  ways  increasing  that 
power,  it  was  not  until  1882,  that  the  Court  of 
Appeals  decided  them  to  be  the  rightful  owners  of 
articles  of  personal  adornment  and  convenience  coming 
from  their  husbands,  possessing  power  to  bequeath 
them  at  death  to  their  heirs.  The  same  year  the 
Supreme  Court  of  that  state  decided  that  a  wife  may 
sue  her  husband  for  damages   for  assault  and  battery. 


328  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

The  influence  of  these  decisions  in  recognizing 
woman's  rights  of  person,  especially  that  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  in  deciding  the  right  of  the  wife  to  pun- 
ish the  husband  through  the  courts  for  brutal  treat- 
ment, can  scarcely  be  over-estimated.  It  opened  a 
new  era  for  woman: 

First:     A  recognition  of  the  wife's  personality. 

Second:  Holdi  ng  the  husband  responsible  for  his 
treatment  of  the  wife. 

Third:  An  acknowledgment  of  the  wife's  right  to 
protection  as  against  the  husband.  It  destroyed,  in 
this  state  the  old  femme  covert  teaching  of  Christianity, 
and  recognized  a  wife  as  possessing  the  common  rights 
of  a  human  being. 

The  United  States,  making  pretense  of  the  greatest 
governmental  freedom  in  the  world,  and  in  reality 
according  it  to  men  of  every  color  and  degree  of  in- 
telligence or  property,  still  denies  such  liberty  to 
woman.  In  many  of  the  states,  the  old  restrictions  of 
modern  common  law  still  prevail.  There  are  states 
where  the  property  of  the  wife  upon  marriage  falls  in- 
to the  control  of  the  husband,  to  do  with  as  he  alone 
pleases,  the  wife  not  retaining  the  right  to  its  use  or 
its  management  in  anyway  whatsoever.  There  are  other 
states  where  the  separate  property  of  the  husband  and 
the  wife  is  made  communal,  but  in  those  states  the 
control  of  this  communal  property  is  in  the  husband's 
hands.  In  most  states  the  old  restrictions  still  exist, 
and  a  woman  cannot  make  a  will;  cannot  act  as  exe- 
cutrix or  administratrix;  can  neither  sue  nor  be  sued. 
In  the  largest  proportion  of  the  states  in  which  the 
separate  property  of  the  wife  is  recognized,  the  hus- 
band still  has  the  advantage  in  heirship.  In  less 
than    one-fifth    of   the  states   has    the    wife    the  same 


WIVES  329 

control  over  the  children  of  the  marriage  as  the 
husband.  In  the  remaining  four-fifths  and  over,  the 
father  is  assumed  to  be  sole  owner  of  the  children, 
who  can  be  bound  out,  willed  or  given  away  without 
the  consent  or  even  knowledge  of  the  mother.  Can 
barbarism  go  farther  than  this? 

So  that  even  in  this  year  1892,  within  eight  years  of 
the  Twentieth  Christian  century,  we  find  the  largest 
proportion  of  the  United  States  still  giving  to  the 
husband  custody  of  the  wife's  person;  the  exclusive 
control  of  the  children  of  the  marriage;  of 
the  wife's  personal  and  real  estate;  the  absolute 
right  to  her  labor  and  all  products  of  her  industry.  In 
no  state  does  the  law  recognize  the  legal  existence  of 
the  wife,  unless  she  relinquishes  her  own  name,  upon 
marriage,  taking  that  of  her  husband,  thus  sinking  her 
identity  in  his;  the  old  femme  covert, — or  covered 
woman, — idea  of  the  law  books  under  state  and  church. 
That  woman  is  an  individual  with  the  right  to  her 
own  separate  existence,  has  not  yet  permeated  the 
thought  of  church,  state  or  society.  A  letter  to  the 
American  press  from  Rev.  Robert  Laird  Collyer,  while 
re-visiting  his  native  country  a  few  years  since,  gives 
the  unbiased  views  of  a  native-born  English  clergy- 
man, as  to  woman's  position  in  that  land  of  christian 
civilization,  the  husband  being  represented  as  king  of 
the  household,  the  wife  as  his  dutiful  subject.  The 
letter  was  headed: 

MARRIAGE  CUSTOMS  IN  ENGLAND. 


The  Man  King  of  the  House,  the  Woman 
His    Dutiful    Subject. 

The  man  is  the  king  of  the  English  household,  and 
the  wife  is  only  the  prime  minister.     There  is  no  con- 


33°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

fusion  or  overlapping  of  authority.  The  will  of  the 
husband  is  law.  He  has  not  only  the  place  of  honor 
but  of  ease.  The  arrangements  of  the  house,  the  com- 
pany entertained,  and  the  service  employed,  all  have 
respect  to  his  wishes  and  to  his  convenience.  The 
wife  conducts  the  affairs  of  state  for  the  king.  She 
has  her  household  and,  more  than  likely,  her  personal 
allowance,  and  she  renders  a  strict  account  of  steward- 
ship either  weekly  or  monthly. 

The  wife's  personal  expenditures  are  less,  much  less 
than  the  husband's.  In  many  instances  he  will  spend 
more  on  his  dress  as  a  man  than  she  does  as  a  woman, 
for  the  rule  is,  the  Englishman  is  the  best-dressed  man 
and  the  English  woman  is  the  worst  dressed  in  the 
civilized  world. 

"The  will  of  the  husband  is  law,"  the  wife  possess- 
ing no  freedom,  but  renders  "a  strict  account  of  her 
stewardship,  either  weekly  or  monthly."  Kicks,  blows, 
wounds  inflicted  upon  the  wife  under  the  counte- 
nance of  the  civil  law ;  the  will  of  the  husband  as  un- 
disputed law;  her  person,  her  property,  her  children 
under  his  sole  control;  what  is  the  condition  of  the 
wife  in  England  to  day  but  one  of  degraded  slavery? 
That  every  woman  does  not  endure  all  these  wrongs  is 
simply  because  she  has  a  lenient  master.  Like  Adolph 
under  St.  Clair,  in  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  she  has 
freedom  because  a  good  master  allows  her  to  take  it; 
under  a  bad  master  she  suffers  as  Adolph  when  falling 
into  the  hands  of  Legree.  Personal  rights  are  the 
basis  of  all  other  rights;  personal  slavery  is  the  root 
of  all  other  wrongs.  Neither  freedom  of  the  intellect 
or  conscience  can  exist  without  freedom  of  person. 
Thus  civilization  has  not  yet  existed,  that  which  has 
borne  the  name  having  been  but  the  thought  of  the 
few;  the  civilization  of  the  present  is  not  enlightened 
it  belongs  to  the  barbarous  ages;  authority  and  not 
justice  is  the  rule.     To  the   present  time  the    lenient 


WIVES  331 

sentence  imposed  upon  the  English  husband  who  beats 
his  wife  is  such  as  to  invite  a  repetition  of  the  offense; 
knocking  a  wife  down,  beating  and  bruising  her  with 
a  poker  are  rights  secured  to  the  husband  under  pre- 
sent English  law. 

A  man  named  Hefferon,  at  Rotherham,  finding  his 
wife  had  gone  to  some  place  of  which  he  disapproved, 
knocked  her  down  and  beat  her  violently  with  a  poker. 
She  bled  from  both  ears,  her  throat  was  scratched, 
and  she  was  badly  bruised  on  her  back  and  arms.  Mr. 
Justice  Day  practically  told  the  jury  to  acquit.  He 
said  the  case  ought  not  to  have  come  before  them,  and 
he  suggested  that  the  prisoner  had  been  merely  exer- 
cising that  control  over  his  wife  which  was  still  sanc- 
tioned by  the  law  of  England.43  The  jury  acquitted 
promptly,  as  directed." 

To  such  extent  is  this  abuse  of  woman  under  law  as 
to  have  called  forth  a  vigorous  article  in  the  "West- 
minister Review,"46  under  head  of  "The  Law  in  Rela- 
tion to  Woman." 

There  is  another  cruel  injustice  to  woman,  which  is 
so  notorious  as  to  have  become  a  mere  truism.  It  is 
referred  to  almost  daily,  yet  familiarity  has  bred  such 
contempt,  that  it  goes  on  unchecked  and  unabated. 
We  refer  to  the  monstrously  lenient  sentences  passed 
upon  husbands  who  assault  and  beat  their  wives.  In 
one  of  our  criminals  courts  recently,  two  men  and  a 
woman  were  sentenced  to  six  years  penal  servitude 
for  stealing  a  watch  by  force,  while  a  man  who 
assaulted  and  grievously  wounded  his  wife  and  mother- 

43.  James  Howard,  thirty-five  years  old,  was  taken  from  jail  at  Texarkana, 
Ark.,  on  Wednesday  night  by  a  mob  and  lynched.  He  was  under  arrest  for  hor- 
rible cruelty  to  his  fourteen-year-old  wife.  The  woman  says  that  he  frequently 
tied  her  feet  together  while  she  was  in  a  state  of  nudity,  and  hanging  her  up  by 
the  feet  beat  her  unmercifully  and  threatened  to  kill  her  if  she  told  anyone  of  his 
cruelties.  On  the  first  of  November,  Howard  took  a  common  branding  iron,  used 
to  brand  live  stock,  and  heating  it  red  hot  branded  a  large  letter  "H"  on  his  wife's 
person  in  two  places  while  she  was  tied  to  a  bed. 

44.  "Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  1888.       

45.  "Westminster  Review,"  September,  1887. 


332  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

in-law  with  a  reaping  hook,  got  eighteen  months' 
imprisonment.  An  instance  occurred  the  other 
day  in  a  small  municipal  court.  A  man  pleaded  guil- 
ty to  assaulting  and  kicking  his  wife  and  another 
woman  with  effusion  of  blood  and  injury  to  their  per- 
sons. He  was  fined  a  pound  for  each  female.  Shortly 
after  two  men  were  convicted  of  injuring  public  seats 
belonging  to  the  municipality,  by  knocking  them 
about,  etc.,  they  were  fined  two  pounds  each.  Clear- 
ly, therefore,  in  the  eyes  of  this  magistrate  a  munci- 
pal  seat  is  worth  exactly  twice  the  value  of  a  woman. 
Parallel  sentences  to  these  may  be  seen  almost  daily 
in  the  newspapers  in  any  part  of  the  United  King- 
dom. In  the  police  courts,  wife-beaters  often  get  off 
with  a  few  days  imprisonment,  sometimes  with  an 
admonition.  If  it  be  argued  that  theft  is  such  a  com- 
mon offense  that  it  is  necessary  that  it  should  be  pun- 
ished with  greater  severity  than  cruelty,  we  rejoice 
that  the  argument  applies  quite  as  forcibly  to 
wife-beating,  which,  unfortunately  is  as  common  an 
offence  as  can  be  found  among  a  certain  class  of 
society.** 

The  comparison  here  shown  between  the  penalty  of 
criminally  assaulting  and  wounding  women,  not  alone 
the  man's  wife  but  also  her  aged  mother,  most  forci- 
bly shows  the  entire  disregard  of  Christian  England  in 
the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  for  the  person- 
al rights  of  all  women.  No  proof  is  needed  other  than 
such  decisions;  nor  is  the  United  States  far  in 
advance.  Within  ten  months  from  the  formation  of  the 
"Protective  Agency  for  Women  and  Children,"  organ- 
ized in  Chicago,  April  1886,  it  had  investigated  near- 
ly one  hundred  complaints.  Although  in  a  majority 
of  these  cases  the  agency  was  successful  in  securing 
redress,  it  yet  found  there  was  not  legal  remedy  where 

46.  Cato,  the  Roman  (pagan),  censor  three  centuries  before  the  Christian  era, 
said:  "They  who  beat  their  wives  or  children  lay  sacrilegious  hands  on  the 
most  sacred  things  in  the  world.  For  myself,  I  prefer  the  character  of  a  good 
husband  to  that  of  a  great  senator." 


wives  333 

the  husband  and  father  failed  to  provide  for  his  family; 
and  that  in  ca3es  of  crimes  against  women,  its  efforts 
were  crippled  by  the  disposition  of  police  justices  to 
regard  such  crimes  as  venial  offenses,  either  dismiss- 
ing  such  cases  upon  frivolous  pretexts  or  imposing 
light  sentences.  Nothing  could  more  clearly  demon 
strate  woman's  degraded  condition  in  the  nineteenth 
century  of  christian  civilization,  than  the  almost  uni- 
versal demand  for  laws  securing  better  protection  to 
women  and  children.  These  two  classes,  unrecognized 
by  church  or  state,  are  still  largely  without  that  pale 
of  protection  man  has  reared  for  himself.  January  23, 
1886,  the  "Inter  Ocean,"  gave  more  than  six  columns 
to  an  account  of  the  dreadful  crimes  committed  against 
women  and  children  in  Chicago  alone,  within  the 
short  period  of  the  preceding  four  months.  It  also 
showed  the  ease  with  which  criminals  of  that  class 
escaped  punishment,  not  alone  from  laxity  of  protec- 
tive legislation  for  their  victims  but  still  more  from 
the  tendency  of  magistrates  to  ignore  crimes  perpe- 
trated by  men  against  women;  this  condition  being 
the  natural  result  of  the  teaching  of  the  church  in 
regard  to  woman.  In  the  city  of  Boston,  1884,  the 
Chief  of  Police,  testified  that  there  were  at  least  fif- 
teen cases  of  brutal  wife-beating  in  that  city  every 
week,  and  this  is  but  one  type  of  the  injuries  perpe- 
trated upon  women  for  which  the  teachings  of  Chris- 
tianity are  directly  responsible.  So  common  this 
crime  and  so  ineffective  all  efforts  to  stop  it,  that  the 
State  of  Delaware  has  re-established  the  long  abolished 
whipping-post,  for  offenders  of  this  character,  thus 
acknowledging  christian  civilization  to  be  a  failure, 
and  resorting  to  the  retributive  punishment  common 
among  barbarians.     But  the  remedy  for  crimes  against 


334  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

women,  and  for  the  indifference  of  magistrates,  does 
not  lie  in  the  punishment  of  the  offenders,  but  in 
different  sentiments  in  regard  to  woman  in  both 
church  and  state.  Their  teachings  are  the  real  founda- 
tions of  the  evil.  Within  the  past  ten  years,  the 
judge  of  an  English  Court  decided  that  the  flogging  of 
a  wife  in  the  presence  of  her  son  did  not  constitute 
cruelty,  sustaining  his  decision  by  reference  to  Black- 
stone  and  other  learned  christian  jurists.  It  was  dur- 
ing that  same  year  (1884)  that  the  chief  of  the  Boston 
police  testified  to  the  many  cases  of  brutal  wife  beat- 
ing in  that  "Athens  of  America,"  every  week.  So 
common  this  form  of  assault  that  a  bill  was  introdu- 
ced in  the  Massachusetts  lower  House  for  the  punish- 
ment of  wife  beaters,  by  a  public  whipping  of  not 
less  than  ten  or  more  than  thirty  lashes.47  For  those 
refractory  wives  of  mediaeval  christian  England,  whom 
whippings  failed  to  subdue,  other  punishments  were 
invented;  such  as  the  "Ducking  Stool,"  the  "Scold's 
Bridle,"  etc.*8  The  Scold's  Bridle,  also  known  as  the 
Witches  Bridle  and  the  Brank,  was  an  extremely  pain- 
ful method  of  torture,  although  not  as  absolutely  dan- 
gerous to  life  as  the  Ducking  Stool,  yet  fastened  in 
the  mouth,  its  sharp  edges  pressing  down  upon  the 
tongue,  if  the  "Brawling  Woman"  attempted  to  speak 
her  tongue  was  cut  and  the  torture  great.49  An  Amer- 
ican clergyman  describing  in  a  public  lecture  an 
"ancient  machine"  seen  by   him   in  christian  England, 

47.  The  bill  failed  of  passing  upon  the  ground  that  the  lash  belonged  to  the 
dark  ages,  degrading  a  man  by  its  infliction. 

48.  An  English  lady,  Mrs.  Margaret  Bright  Lucus,  in  writing  a  description  of 
this  implement  said:  "This  country  has  even  now  but  little  to  boast  in  her  laws 
regarding  woman,  and  your  country  is  burdened  with  similar  evil  laws;  the  Fran- 
chise is  most  important." 

49.  The  Museum  at  Reading,  England,  contains  among  its  curiosities  a  bridle 
formerly  used  to  stop  the  mouths  of  scolding  women  in  that  town. 


wives  335 

'for  curing  a  scolding  wife,"  accompanied  his  descrip- 
tion by  the  very  clerical  intimation  that  it  could  now 
be  made  by  an  ordinary  blacksmith.  Two  curved 
plates  of  bronze  conformed  to  the  shape  of  the  head, 
were  delicately  hinged  and  provided  with  hooks  to 
place  in  the  corners  of  the  mouth.  When  adjusted, 
the  machine  was  buckled  back  of  the  head.60 

The  Ducking  Stool51  consisted  of  a  chair  securely  fast- 
ened upon  a  long  plank  balanced  upon  upright  standards, 
and  so  arranged  that  the  victim  could  be  launched 
sixteen  or  eighteen  feet  into  the  pond  or  stream,  while 
the  executioner  of  the  sentence  stood  upon  dry  ground. 
The  back  and  arms  of  the  chair  were  engraved  with 
representations  of  devils  torturing  scolds.  The  cul- 
prit securely  fastened  in  this  chair,  so  confined  as  to 
be  entirely  helpless,  was  sometimes  drowned;  the 
chair  being  plunged  once,  twice,  or  thrice  in  some 
muddy  stream  or  slimy  pond.  The  suggestive  and 
usual  place  of  storing  the  Ducking  Stool,  when  not 
in  use,  was  the  church-yard.  Almost  every  English 
town  of  importance  possessed  one;  their  use  was  con- 
tinued    until    the    present  century.     The  Leominster 

50.  Sometimes  called  Timbrel,  or  Gum  Stole. 

51.  "It  would  seem  that  almost  every  English  town  of  any  importance  had  its 
ducking-stool  for  scolds.  In  1741  old  Rugby  paid  2s  4d  for  a  chair  for  the  ducking 
stool.  The  parish  of  Southam,  in  Warwickshire,  got  a  beautiful  stool  built  in 
1718  at  ari  expense  of  £2  us  4d.     Ancient  Coventry  had  two  stools." 

The  most  noteworthy  of  all  the  instruments  designed  for  the  correction  of 
Eve's  offending  daughters  was  the  ducking-stool,  known  as  the  tumbrel  and  the 
trebuchet.  A  post,  across  which  was  a  transverse  beam  turning  on  a  swivel  and 
with  a  chair  at  one  end,  was  set  up  on  the  edge  of  a  pond.  Into  the  chair  the 
woman  was  chained,  turned  toward  the  water — a  muddy  or  filthy  pond  was  usually 
chosen  for  this  purpose  when  available — and  ducked  half  a  dozen  times;  or,  if 
the  water  inflamed  her  instead  of  acting  as  a  damper,  she  was  let  down  times  in- 
numerable, until  she  was  exhausted  and  well  nigh  drowned. 

From  the  frequency  with  which  we  find  it  mentioned  in  old  local  and  county 
histories,  in  church  wardens*  and  chamberlains'  accounts,  and  by  the  poets,  we 
shall  probably  not  be  wrong  in  concluding  that  at  one  time  this  institution  was 
kept  up  all  over  the  country. — "London  Graphic." 


336  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Ducking  Stool,  still  preserved,  was  used  in  1809,  by 
order  of  the  magistrates,  upon  a  woman  named  Jane 
Corran,  who  received  her  punishment  near  Kenwater, 
Bridge.  As  late  as  1817  Sarah  Leeke  was  wheeled 
around  town  in  this  chair,  although  the  lowness  of  the 
stream  prevented  the  ducking52  she  would  otherwise 
have  received.  Railing  and  scolding  or  "answering 
back,"  were  deemed  crimes  on  the  part  of  the  wife, 
who,  "commanded  to  be  under  obedience,"  was  ex- 
pected silently  to  submit  to  oppression  of  every  kind. 
That  she  did  not — that  she  dared  revolt  by  words — 
that  women  in  sufficient  number  to  cause  the  inven- 
tion of  such  an  instrument,  were  rebellious  in  midst 
of  the  horrid  oppression  created  by  the  church,  speaks 
well  for  the  womanly  nature  and  thrills  the  heart 
with  admiration  the  same  as  when  old  Margaret  Pole, 
Countess  of  Salisbury,  refused  to  lay  her  head  on  the 
block  at  the  executioner's  mandate,  declaring  that  as 
she  was  innocent,  she  would  not  voluntarily  place  her- 
self in  position  for  death.  While  England  has  the 
shame  of  originating  the  Ducking  Stool,  the  "Pilgrim 
Fathers,"  fleeing  from  religious  persecution,  failed  not 
to  take  with  them  the  implements  of  cruelty  used  in 
the  domestic  oppression  of  woman.  The  Ducking 
Stool,  and  the  "Stool  of  Penitence"  figure  in  the  ear- 
ly annals  of  New  England.  Upon  the  latter,  the 
Scarlet  Letter  of  shame  affixed  upon  her  breast,  the 
unmarried  mother  was  forcibly  seated  beneath  the  pul- 
pit, under  public  gaze,  while  her  companion  in  sin 
protected  by  church  and  state,  perchance  held  his 
place  among  the  elders  in  the  jury  box,  or  upon  the 
bench  as  the  judge  who  had  condemned  her.  Old 
Colonial  legislation  makes  us  acquainted  with  the  var- 

52    John  Dillon.— Colonial  Legislation  of  America. 


wives  337 

ious  methods  in  use  for  punishing  the  free  speech  of 
women  in  this  country  two  hundred  years  since. 

"A  Law  to  Punish  Babbling  Women"  enacted  by 
the  General  Assembly,  of  Virginia,   1662. 

Whereas,  many  babbling  women  slander  and  scan- 
dalize their  neighbors,  for  which  their  poor  husbands 
are  often  involved  in  chargable  and  vexatious  suits 
and  cost  in  great  damages.  Be  it  therefore  enacted 
by  the  authority  aforesaid,  that  in  actions  of  slander 
caused  by  the  wife,  after  judgment  passed  for  dam- 
ages, the  wife  shall  be  punished  by  ducking;  and  if 
the  slander  be  so  enormous  as  to  be  judged  at  greater 
damages  than  500  lbs.  of  tobacco,  then  the  wife  to 
suffer  ducking  for  each  500  pounds  of  tobacco  adjudg- 
ed against  the  husband,  if  he  refuses  to  pay  the 
tobacco. 

As  this  was  the  state  in  which  wives  were  bought 
in  exchange  for  tobacco,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find 
the  penalty  of  her  free  speech  to  be  paid  in  tobacco, 
the  wife  to  suffer  ducking  for  each  500  pounds  penalty 
in  excess  of  the  first.  Massachusetts  was  not  long  in 
following  the  example  of  Virginia,  and  in  1672  ten 
years  later,  passed 

A  Law  for  the  Punishment  of  Scolds  in 
Massachusetts. 

Whereas,  there  is  no  express  punishment  (by  law 
hitherto  established)  affixed  to  the  evil  practice  of 
sundry  persons  by  exhorbitancy  of  tongue  in  reviling 
and  scolding;  it  is  therefore  ordered  that  all  such  per- 
sons convicted  before  any  court  or  magistrate  that 
hath  proper  cognizance  of  the  case,  shall  be  gagged, 
set  in  a  ducking  stool  and  dipped  over  head  and  ears 
three  times,  in  some  convenient  place  of  fresh  or  salt 
water,  as  the  court  or  magistrate  shall  judge  meet.63 

Nor  must  we  believe  that  the  punishment  of  women 

53.  I*** 


338  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

for  use  of  the  tongue,  is  of  past  ages.  Even  in  the 
United  States,  women  are  to  this  day  sometimes 
arraigned  for  free  speaking.  Laws  to  punish  "bab- 
bling women"  enacted  in  colonial  days  are  still  in 
force.  It  is  but  a  few  years  since  a  women  of  St. 
Louis  was  arrested  and  brought  before  a  magistrate  as 
a  common  scold.6*  In  the  State  of  New  Jersey,  1884, 
a  woman  was  brought  before  the  courts,  convicted,  on 
the  old  grounds  of  being  a  "common  scold"  and  fined 
#25,  and  costs.  Death  not  infrequently  accompanied 
the  use  of  the  ducking  stool,  the  poor  gagged  victim, 
her  hands  securely  fastened,  being  utterly  unable  to 
help  herself.  But  we  do  not  learn  that  either  the 
magistrate  or  the  husband  was  held  responsible  to 
the  law  for  such  death.  The  sufferers,  like  those 
under  the  catholic  inquisition  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, were  deemed  outside  of  the  pale  of  sympathy  or 
human  rights,  and  the  devils  depicted  upon  the  back 
of  ducking  stools  as  laying  hold  of  their  victims,  were 
conceded  to  have  but  taken  their  rightful  prey. 

Such  has  been  part  of  Christian  legislation  for 
women  in  America,  and  yet  she  is  told  to  see  how 
much  Christianity  has  done  for  her.  To  such  extent 
has    this    church    doctrine    of    man's    superiority    to 

54.  Jersey  City,  N.  J.,  July  23,  1887. — Mrs.  Mary  Brody,  convicted  a  few  days 
ago  of  being  a  common  scold,  was  to-day  sentenced  to  pay  a  fine  of  $25  and  costs. 

Only  the  other  day  a  woman  in  this  city,  under  some  ancient  unrepealed  law 
of  this  state,  was  arrested  and  brought  before  a  magistrate  on  the  charge  of  being 
a  common  scold.  A  too  free  use  of  the  tongue  was  reckoned  a  public  offense  in 
all  the  American  colonies,  and  in  England  the  lawful  punishment  of  common 
scolds  was  continued  until  a  recent  day.  It  was  for  these  that  the  "ducking- 
stool"  was  invented,  which  usually  consists  of  a  heavy  chair  fastened  to  the  end 
of  a  large  piece  of  timber,  which  was  hung  by  the  middle  to  a  post  on  the  river 
side.  The  offender  was  tied  into  the  chair,  and  then  soused  into  the  water  until 
it  was  judged  that  her  shrewishness  had  departed  from  her.  Sometimes  she  was 
dipped  so  thoroughly  that  her  breath  departed  for  good,  as  happened  to  a  certain 
elderly  lady  at  Ratcliffe  Highway.  The  ducking-stool  was  constantly  hanging  in 
its  place,  and  on  the  back  of  it  were  engraved  devils  laying  hold  of  scolds,  etc.— 
"St.  Louis  Republican." 


wives  339 

woman,  and  the  right  of  the  husband  to  control  of  the 
wife  proceeded,  that  many  husbands  believe  they  pos- 
sess the  right  to  sell  their  wives.  Since  the  reforma- 
tion her  sale  in  the  market-place  as  an  animal,  held 
by  a  halter  about  her  waist,  has  been  recognized  by 
English  law  even  as  late  as  the  present  century.  Al- 
though now  forbidden,  the  practice  of  wife-sale  is  still 
occasionally  found  both  in  England  and  in  America.  But 
when  the  law  takes  cognizance  of  such  a  sale  its  penal- 
ty is  visited  upon  the  innocent  wife  and  not  upon  the 
guilty  husband.  The  "English  Women's  Suffrage 
Journal"  of  December  ist,  1883,  reported  such  a  case. 

November  13th,  1883,  Betsy  Wardle,  was  indicted 
for  having  on  the  4th  of  September,  1882,  married 
George  Chusmall,  her  former  husband  being  alive. 
The  prisoner  pleaded  guilty,  but  said  her  former  hus- 
band gave  her  no  peace  and  sold  her  for  a  quart  of 
beer.  She  imagined  this  was  a  legal  transaction,  and 
that  she  could  marry  again.  The  second  husband  was 
asked  how  he  came  to  marry  the  prisoner.  He 
answered  "Well,  I  bout  her."  The  judge  said,  "You 
are  not  fool  enough  to  suppose  you  can  buy  another 
man's  wife?"  on  which  he  replied,  "I  was." 

Mr.  Swift  asked  his  lordship  not  to  pass  a  severe 
sentence.  The  prisoner  imagined  that  because  she 
had  been  sold  for  sixpence  there  was  nothing  criminal 
in  marrying  again.  His  lordship  said  it  was  absolute- 
ly necessary  to  pass  some  punishment  on  her  to  teach 
her  that  a  man  had  no  more  right  to  sell  his  own  wife 
than  his  neighbor's  wife,  or  cow,  or  ox,  or  ass,  or  any- 
thing that  was  his. 

The  reason  given  by  the  judge  for  punishing  the 
woman,  is  extremely  suggestive  of  woman's  condition 
under  the  law.  The  wife  who  had  been  sold,  the  in- 
nocent victim  of  this  masculine  transaction,  was  sen- 
tenced to  a  week's  imprisonment  with  hard  labor,  while 
the  man  who  sold  her  and  the   man    who    bought    her 


34°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

escaped  without  punishment  or  censure.  The  judge 
in  quoting  the  tenth  commandment,  graded  the  wife 
with  the  ox  and  the  ass  in  the  belongings  of  a  man; 
the  decision  thus  ranking  her  with  the  cattle  of  the 
stable.55  To  add  to  the  infamy  of  this  trial,  it  was  the 
occasion  of  much  unseemly  jesting  and  laughter.  It 
took  place  at  the  Liverpool  Assizes  before  Justice 
Denham.     His  judgment  paralleled  the  decision  of  the 

55.  If  it  is  a  crime  to  buy  and  sell  wives,  let  the  men  who  do  such  things  be 
punished;  if  there  is  no  crime  in  the  transaction,  why  should  the  wife  who  is  sold 
be  punished.  Unfortunately  this  is  not  a  solitary  instance  of  law  made  or  admin- 
istered to  punish  women  in  order  to  teach  men.— English  Women's  Suffrage 
Journal. 

Before  Mr.  Justice  Denman,  at  the  Liverpool  Assizes,  Betsy  Wardle  was 
charged  with  marrying  George  Chisnal  at  Eccleston,  bigamously,  her  former  hus- 
band being  alive.  It  was  stated  by  the  woman  that,  as  her  first  husband  had  sold 
her  for  a  quart  of  beer,  she  thought  she  was  at  liberty  to  marry  again. 

George  Chisnal,  the  second  husband,  apparently  just  out  of  his  teens  was 
called. 

His  Lordship — "How  did  you  come  to  marry  this  woman?" 

Witness  (in  the  Lancashire  vernacular)— "Hoo  did  a  what?"     [Laughter.] 

Question  repeated— "A  bowt  her."    [Laughter.] 

His  Lordship — "You  are  not  fool  enough  to  suppose  you  can  buy  another  man's 
wife?    Oi?"    [Laughter.] 

His  Lordship — "How  much  did  you  give  for  her?"  Six  pence.  [Great 
laughter.] 

His  Lordship  asked  him  how  long  he  had  lived  with  the  prisoner. 

Witness — "Going  on  for  three  years." 

His  Lordship — "Do  you  want  to  take  her  back  again?" 

"Awl  keep  her  if  you  loike."    [Laughter.] 

His  Lordship  (addressing  the  prisoner)--,It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  I 
should  pass  some  punishment  upon  you  in  order  that  people  may  understand  that 
men  have  no  more  right  to  sell  their  wives  than  they  have  to  sell  other  people's 
wives,  or  to  sell  other  people's  horses  or  cows,  or  anything  of  the  kind.  You  can- 
not make  that  a  legal  transaction.  So  many  of  you  seem  to  be  ignorant  of  that, 
that  it  is  necessary  to  give  you  some  punishment  in  order  that  you  may  under- 
stand it.  It  is  not  necessary  it  should  be  long,  but  you  must  be  imprisoned  and 
kept  to  hard  labor  for  one  week.— "News  of  the  World,"  1883. 

A  peculiar  case  came  up  in  the  mayor's  office  at  Vincennes,  Ind.,  in  1887.  A 
man  named  Bohn  sold  his  wife  to  another  man  named  Burch  for  $300,  and  held 
Burch's  note  therefor.  The  sale  was  a  reality,  but  the  note  was  never  paid, 
hence  the  difficulty. 

"We  know  a  man  in  the  Black  Hills— a  man  who  is  well-to-do  and  respected — 
the  foundation  of  whose  fortune  was  $4,000,  the  sum  for  which  he  sold  his  wife  to 
a  neighbor.  The  sale  was  purely  a  matter  of  business  all  around,  and  the  parties 
to  it  were  highly  satisfied."    1889.— "The  Times,"  Bismarck,  N.  D. 


WIVES  341 

"Seney  Trial"  in  Ohio,  1879.  The  selling  a  wife  as  a 
cowM  in  the  market  place  was  by  no  means  uncommon 
during  the  early  part  of  the  century  in  England.  Ash- 
ton57  gives  numerous  instances  of  such  sales. 

The  laws  of  England  are  those  of  Christianity  based 
upon  the  theological  teaching  of  man's  superiority 
over  woman;  she  is  his  servant,  subordinate  to  him  in 
all  things,  a  condition  except  where  removed  by  spec- 
ial statute,  existing  to-day.58  Returned  missionaries 
who  refer  to  the  wife  as  waiting  upon  the  husband  at 
table  in  heathen  countries  not  eating  until  he  is  sat- 
isfied, as  proof  of  the  different  customs  brought  about 
by  Christianity,  should  inform  themselves  of  the  con- 
dition of  the  christian  wife  for  nearly  a  thousand  years 
in  what  is  regarded  as  the  foremost  christian  country 
in  the  world.      He  will  then  have  learned  that  circum- 

56.  In  "The  Doncaster  Gazette"  of  March  25,  1803,  a  sale  is  thus  described: 
"A  fellow  sold  his  wife,  as  a  cow,  in  Sheffield  market  place  a  few  days  ago.  The 
lady  was  put  into  the  hands  of  a  butcher,  who  held  her  by  a  halter  fastened 
around  her  waist.  'What  do  you  ask  for  your  cow?'  said  a  bystander.  'A  guinea' 
replied  the  husband.  'Done,'  cried  the  other,  and  immediately  led  away  his  bar- 
gain. We  understand  that  the  purchaser  and  his  'cow'  live  very  happily  together." 
Ashton. —  The  Progress  0/  Women. 

57.  "Morning  Herald,"  March  11,  1802.— On  the  nth  of  last  month  a  person 
aold.  at  the  market  cross,  in  Chapel  en  la  Frith,  a  wife,  a  child,  and  as  much  fur- 
niture as  would  set  up  a  beggar,  for  eleven  shillings. 

"Morning  Herald,"  April  16,  1802. — A  butcher  sold  his  wife  by  auction  at  the 
last  market  day  at  Hereford.    The  lot  brought  £1  4s.  and  a  bowl  of  punch. 

"Annual  Register,"  February  14,  1806.— A  man  named  John  Garsthorpe  ex- 
posed his  wife  for  sale  in  the  market  at  Hall  about  1  o'clock,  but  owing  to  the 
crowd  which  such  an  extraordinary  occurrence  had  brought  together,  he  was 
obliged  to  defer  the  sale,  and  take  her  away,  about  4  o'clock.  However,  he  again 
brought  her  out,  and  she  was  sold  for  20  guineas,  and  delivered  with  a  halter,  to 
a  person  named  Houseman,  who  had  lodged  with  them  for  four  or  five  years. 

"Morning  Post,"  October  10,  1808.— One  of  those  disgraceful  scenes  which 
have  of  late  become  too  common  took  place  on  Friday  se'nnight  at  Knaresborough. 
Owing  to  some  jealousy,  or  other  family  difference,  a  man  brought  his  wife, 
equipped  in  the  usual  style,  and  sold  her  at  the  market  cross  for  6d  and  a  quid  of 
tobacco. — Ibid. 

58.  Our  laws  are  based  on  the  all-sufficiency  of  man's  rights;  society  exists  for 
men  only;  for  women,  merely  in  so  far  as  they  are  represented  by  some  man,  are 
in  the  tnundt,  or  keeping  of  some  man.  Herbert  Spencer.— Descriptive  Sociology , 
England, 


342  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

stances  quite  contradictory  to  ecclesiasticism  finally 
permitted  the  English  wife  to  assume  a  seat  at  the 
table  with  her  husband,  a  place  she  was  not 
allowed  to  take  for  many  hundred  years  after  the  in- 
troduction of  Christianity  into  that  island.  In  every 
country  where  Christianity  exists,  women  now  are,  and 
during  all  the  years  of  its  civil  power  have  been,  leg- 
islated for  as  slaves.  They  have  been  imprisoned  for 
crimes  which  if  committed  by  a  man  were  punished 
by  simply  branding  on  the  hand;  they  have  been  con- 
demned to  be  buried  alive  for  other  crimes  which  if 
committed  by  a  man,  were  atoned-for  by  the  payment 
of  a  fine.  Having  first  robbed  woman  of  her  property 
and  denied  her  the  control  of  her  own  earnings,  the 
christian  religion  allowed  her  to  suffer  the  most  agon- 
izing form  of  death,  a  living  burial,  for  lack  of  that 
very  money  of  which  she  had  been  civilly  and  eccle- 
siastically robbed.  The  law  so  far  controlled  family 
life  that  for  many  hundred  years  it  bound  to  servile 
labor,  all  unmarried  women  between  the  ages  of  eleven 
and  forty.  The  father  possessed  absolute  control  over 
the  marital  destiny  of  his  daughter. 

Instances  of  wife  sale  are  not  uncommon  in  the 
United  States,  and  although  the  price  is  usually  higher 
than  that  given  for  English  wives,  reaching  from  three 
hundred  to  four  thousand  dollars,  still,  as  low  a  sum 
as  five  cents  has  been  recorded.  A  prosperous  resi- 
dent of  Black  Hills,  Dakota,  is  said  to  have  begun  his 
business  start  in  life  through  sale  of  his  wife.  If  a 
wife  is  a  husband's  property  the  same  as  a  cow,  it  is 
manifestly  unjust  that  legal  punishment  of  any  kind 
should  fall  upon  her  because  of  her  master's  action. 
She  is  irresponsible.  The  right  of  sale  logically  goes 
with  the  right  of  beating,  of  taking  the   wife's  proper- 


wives  343 

ty  and  holding  her  earnings,  of  owning  her  children, 
and  she  should  be  exempt  from  punishment  for  her  own 
sale.  In  a  much  larger  measure  we  find  the  same  rule  of 
punishing  wives  for  the  crimes  of  husbands,  enforced 
in  the  United  States,  in  the  penalty  of  dis-franchise- 
ment  of  the  women  of  Utah  for  the  polygamy  of  the  men 
of  Utah.  And  this  penalty  was  extended  not  alone  to 
the  wives  of  polygamous  husbands — themselves  pos- 
sessing but  one  husband — victims  alike  of  church  and 
state,  but  the  non-Mormon,  or  "Gentile  Women"  of 
that  territory,  were  also  disfranchised  by  the  XLIX. 
Congress  of  the  United  States  because  of  the  polygamy 
of  a  portion  of  the  Mormon  men ;  all  women  of  that 
territory  were  deprived  of  their  vested  rights,  rights 
that  had  been  in  existence  for  seventeen  years,  because 
of  the  crimes  of  men.69  Against  this  injustice,  the 
Woman  Suffragists  of  the  country  protested  through 
means    of  a  committee  in  a 

MEMORIAL. 


To  the  President  of  the  United  States: 

The  National  Woman  Suffrage  Association,  through 
this  committee,  respectfully  present  to  you  a  protest 
against  that  clause  of  the  anti-polygamy  measure  pass- 
ed by  congress,  which,  whether  in  the  Edmunds  bill 
of  the  senate  or  the  Tucker  substitute  of  the  house, 
disfranchises  the  non-polygamous  women  of  Utah. 

The  clause  relating  to  the  disfranchisement  of  women 
has  no  bearing  on  the  general  merits  of  the  end 
sought  to  be  attained  by  the  measure,  since  Mor- 
mon men  are  the  majority  of  the  voters  of  the  terri- 
tory. 

The  non-polygamous  women  of  Utah  have  com- 
mitted no    crime.     Dis-franchisement    is    reserved  by 

59.  A  committee  appointed  by  the  National  Woman  Suffrage  Association,  at 
that  time  in  convention  assembled  in  Washington,  waited  upon  President  Cleve- 
land with  the  memorial. 


344  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  United  States  government  for  arch  traitors.  Jus- 
tice forbids  that  such  a  penalty  should  be  inflicted  on 
innocent  women. 

Non-polygamous  Mormon  women  and  the  Christian 
women  of  Utah  being  thus  disfranchised — the  former 
for  their  opinions  and  the  latter  for  the  opinions  of 
the  former — a  precedent  is  established  subversive  of 
the  fundamental  principles  of  our  government,  and 
threatening  the  security  of  all  citizens, 

If  congress  deems  it  necessary  to  disfranchise  citi- 
zens because  of  injurious  beliefs,  discrimination  be- 
tween sexes  is  manifestly  unjust. 

It  has  been  held  by  the  foremost  statesmen  of  the 
nation  that  the  right  of  suffrage  once  exercised,  be- 
comes a  vested  right  which  cannot  be  taken  away. 
Gratz  Brown  once  said,  in  the  senate  of  the  United 
States,  that  if  the  idea  that  suffrage  could  be  taken 
away  at  pleasure  once  crystallized  in  the  minds  of  the 
people,  it  would  "ring  the  death  knell  of  American 
liberty."  Mr.  Vest,  of  Missouri,  on  the  25th,  day  of 
this  month,  said,  on  the  floor  of  the  senate:  "Suffrage 
once  given  can  never  be  taken  away.  Legislatures 
and  conventions  may  do  everything  else;  they  never 
can  do  that.  When  any  particular  class  or  fraction  of 
the  community  is  once  invested  with  this  privilege  it 
is  fixed,  accomplished  and  eternal." 

Thus  every  argument  for  justice,  equal  legislation 
and  the  safety  of  our  republican  form  of  government 
calls  for  the  defeat  of  this  clause. 

We,  therefore,  respectfully  urge  you,  as  guardian  of 
the  rights  of  all  American  citizens,  to  veto  any  meas- 
ure coming  before  you  which  disfranchises  the  women 
of  Utah. 

Lillie  Devereux  Blake, 
Matilda  Joslyn  Gage, 
Caroline  Gilkey  Rogers, 
Mary  Seymour  Howell, 
Clara  B    Colby, 
Sarah  Miller, 


wives  345 

Elizabeth  Boynton  Harbert, 
Harriette  R.  Shattuck, 

Louisa  Southworth, 

Committee 

This  memorial,  supplemented  by  personal  argument 
from  the  committee  demonstrating  the  political  dan- 
gers connected  with  such  a  denial  of  vested  rights,  to- 
gether with  the  greater  injustice  of  punishing  women 
for  the  crimes  of  men,  was  met  by  reply  of  the  Presi- 
dent that  as  great  changes  were  frequently  made  in 
bills  before  their  final  passage,  he  had  as  yet  not 
given  the  subject  much  thought ;  promising,  however 
to  give  it  his  fullest  attention  whenever  brought  be- 
fore him.  The  method  taken  by  the  president  to 
avoid  responsibility  of  decision,  is  notable  as  he 
neither  signed  nor  vetoed  the  bill,  but  allowed  it  to 
become  law  through  such  nonaction.  Crimes  of 
omission  being  parallel  with  those  of  commission,  the 
women  of  the  United  States  can  but  hold  Grover 
Cleveland  equally  guilty  with  the  XLIX.  Congress  in 
punishing  women  for  the  crimes  of  men. 

The  Code  of  England,  from  which  that  of  the 
United  States  is  largely  borrowed,  was  the  outgrowth 
of  Christianity,  based  upon  a  belief  in  man's  supe- 
riority and  woman's  subordination  to  him  as  entering 
every  relation  of  life.  All  legislation  was  class;  the 
line  was  sex.  During  the  early  and  middle  ages  man 
exhibited  an  antagonism  towards  woman,60  which  if 
not  wholly  created  by  religious  belief  was  strenuously 

60.  Mediaeval  Christian  husbands  imprisoned  erring  wives  in  cages  so  small 
they  could  neither  stand  upright  nor  lie  down  at  full  length.  Mediaeval  Christian 
priests  boiled  living  infants  in  osier  baskets  in  presence  of  helpless  heretical 
mothers.  In  mediaeval  times  the  public  scourging  of  women  was  one  of  the 
amusements  of  the  carnival;  even  as  late  as  the  eighteenth  century  English  gen- 
tlemen, according  to  Herbert  Spencer %  made  up  parties  of  pleasure  to  see  women 
whipped  at  Bridewell. 


346  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

fostered  by  the  church.  Man's  basest  passion,  love  of 
power,  was  appealed  to  and  he  was  assured  by  what 
he  had  been  trained  to  regard  as  indisputable  authori- 
ty, that  God  had  ordained  his  rule  over  woman.  A 
quick  response  met  all  such  priestly  teaching.  Chris- 
tianity has  ever  been  a  religion  of  the  emotions  rather 
than  of  the  reason.  The  former  was  cultivated;  the 
latter  bitterly  condemned.  The  church  has  ever  found 
its  most  powerful  enemy  in  reason,  hence  the  exercise 
of  reason  has  ever  been  a  crime  in  her  eyes. 

During  the  Christian  ages  the  different  code  of 
morals  for  man  and  woman  has  created  infinite  wrong. 
Open  and  notorious  vice  among  both  churchmen  and 
laymen  passed  unreproved,  but  an  heiress  forfeited 
her  possessions  by  unchastity,  and  wily  plans  were 
laid  to  thus  gain  possession  of  her  property,  the  be- 
trayer receiving  payment  from  the  guardian,  whose 
tool  he  was,  for  his  perfidy.81  To  this  moral  code  we 
trace  the  present  legal  condition  of  girls,  daughters 
having  no  status  in  the  courts  in  case  of  betrayal. 
The  father  alone,  as  master  and  owner,  can  sue  for 
loss  of  her  services,  while  the  injury  to  herself  is 
passed  by,  even  upon  so  momentous  a  question  as  the 
paternity  of  a  child  born  out  of  wedlock. 

Many  of  the  most  flagrant  wrongs  perpetrated 
against  woman  can  be  traced  to  a  denial  of  a  right  of 
ownership,  beginning  with  the  denial  of  her  right  to 
herself.  Even  the  Salic  law  which  in  France  was 
used  to  bar  the  succession  of  woman  to  the  throne, 
was  not  specifically  or  primarily  in  favor  of  males; 
it  was  a  property  law  growing  out  of  the  patriarchal 
idea  of  property  in  woman.      Under   Christian  form  of 

61.  Seduction  was  connived  at  that  the  guardian  might  secure  the  estate  of  the 
ward. — Ibid. 


wives  347 

marriage,  woman  was  transferred  to  another  family 
whose  name  she  took.  She  not  only  became  the  prop- 
erty of  her  husband  but  all  real  or  personal  estate 
which  she  possessed,  also  became  his.  Thus  her 
property  went  to  the  enrichment  of  another  family. 
Her  home  was  no  longer  with  her  own  people,  but 
where  her  husband  chose  to  make  it.  Salic  law  de- 
rived its  name  from  Sala,  a  house.  Salic  land,  said 
Montesquieu,  was  the  land  belonging  to  the  house.62 
At  time  of  its  adoption  the  line  of  descent  was  male. 
Under  it  during  the  middle  ages  when  a  daughter 
married,  she  received  merely  a  chaplet  of  roses. 
Thenceforth,  her  interests  were  elsewhere,  and  her 
children  became  part  of  another  family;  she  was  en- 
tirely lost  to  the  family  of  her  birth.  As  she  was  no 
longer  a  part  of  it  she  did  not  receive  inheritance. 
"It  was  not  a  subject  of  affection  but  gens." 

Guizot  with  a  fine  sense  of  irony,  termed  Salic  law 
essentially  a  penal  code.  Its  application  to  woman 
was  incontestably  penal.  In  France  its  action  has 
been  most  pronounced.  Robertson  speaks  of  the 
Salic  law  as  the  most  venerable  monument  of  French 
jurisprudence,  although  the  real  period  of  its  birth 
has  never  yet  been  fully  acknowledged.  While  during 
the  struggle  of  Phillippa  de  Valours,  and  Edward  III. 
for  the  crown  of  France,  this  law  was  invoked  to 
prevent  the  succession  of  Phillippa,  yet  we  know  that 
in  Gaul  during  the  time  of  Caesar,  mothers  had  sole 
authority  over  their  children,  even  boys  remaining  in 
entire  charge  of  the  mother  until  old  enough  for  in- 
struction in  arms.  Wives  also  possessed  property 
rights,    upon  marriage  the   husband    adding  the    same 

62.  The  Salic  law  had  not  preference  to  one  sex  over  the  other— purely  eco- 
nomical law  which  gave  houses  and  lands  to  males  who  should  dwell  there,  and 
consequently  to  whom  it  would  be  of  most  service. — Spirit  o/the  Laws, 


34-8  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

amount  of  property  he  had  received  with  his  wife. 
This  was  kept  as  a  separate  fund,  the  survivor  taking 
the  whole.  Hallum  designated  the  contest  between 
Phillippa  and  Edward  as  in  every  way  remarkable, 
but  especially  on  account  of  its  result  in  the  exclusion 
of  woman  from  the  succession,68  then  first  suggested. 
It  was  the  Latin  races  rather  than  the  Scandinavian  or 
Teutonic  that  first  essentially  degraded  woman.  The 
Riparian  Franks,  pre-eminent  as  lovers  of  liberty, 
were  the  first  who  broke  away  from  the  rule  of  this 
law.  Both  the  Scandinavians  and  Teutons  possessed 
prophetic  women  or  priestesses  to  whom  the  highest 
deference  was  shown.  The  Teutonic  races  were  early 
noted  for  the  high  respect  in  which  they  held  women, 
a  respect  closely  bordering  upon  veneration.  The 
greatest  deference  was  shown  to  their  opinions  even 
upon  war,  the  chief  business  of  men's  lives.  Victoria 
received  the  title  of  "Mother  of  Camps,"  and  was  an 
especially  venerated  person.  Veleda  by  superior 
genius,  directed  the  counsels  of  the  nation  and  for 
nine  years  prevented  the  progress  of  the  imperial 
armies  of  Rome.  The  most  momentous  questions  of 
state  and  of  religion  were  submitted  to  woman's 
divine  judgment. 

The  relation  between  the  wrongs  of  woman  and  her 
non-ownership  of  property,  and  of  herself,  are  very 
complicated.  The  custom  of  Marquette  originated 
from  the  theory  of  property  in  woman;  the  Suzerain  or 
lord  possessing  not  only  a  certain  property  right  in  his 
male  vassals,  but  a  double  right  to  the  woman  who  as 
a  bride  became  the  property  of  his  vassal.     Thus  Mar- 

63.  In  order  to  give  color  to  the  usurpation  (for  it  was  nothing  better),  the  5aw. 
vers  cited  an  obscure  article  from  the  code  of  the  barbarous  Salians,  which,  as 
they  pretended  had  always  been  the  acknowledged  law  of  the  French  monarchy. 
*  *  *  Since  that  time  the  Salic  law,  as  it  is  called,  has  been  regarded  as  an 
essential  constitutional  principle  in  Franco.— Student's  History  of  France,  p.  iy 


wives  349 

quette  was  the  outgrowth  of  the  husband's  property 
right  in  his  wife,  and  a  secondary  result  of  man's  as- 
sumed right  of  property  in  woman.  In  France,  where 
the  Salic  law  possessed  greatest  strength  we  find  the 
custom  of  marquette  most  prevalent.  Next  to  mar- 
quette,the  law  known  as  "Mund"or  "Mundium"offered 
the  greatest  indignity  to  woman,  and  in  some  respects 
may  be  called  more  vile.  While  the  baseness  of  mar- 
quette took  its  victims  from  a  class  beneath  the  lord 
in  social  standing,  Mundium  entered  the  family,  the 
father  selling  his  daughter  to  such  wooer  as  he  chose, 
or  from  whom  he  received  the  greatest  payment,  en- 
tirely regardless  of  the  wishes  of  the  daughter  herself. 
The  Salic  law  seemed  to  have  been  founded  on  the 
principle  of  the  Mund,  as  under  it  a  sum  was  paid  by 
the  husband  to  the  family  of  the  bride  in  consider- 
ation of  the  transference  of  the  authority  they  pos- 
sessed over  her,  to  the  husband,  and  this  payment  was 
known  as  "MundiunV'and  the  bride  as  a"Mund"bought 
woman.  In  Denmark,  to  which  country  the  custom 
of  mundium  extended,  her  appellation  was  "mundi- 
keypt-krom,"  signifying  a  mund  bought  woman.  At 
that  period  descent  was  reckoned  from  the  father,  to 
whom  alone  the  children  were  held  to  be  related,  and 
his  relinquishment  of  authority  by  sale  of  his  daughter, 
transferred  her  relationship  from  her  father  to  her 
husband,  and  she  thus  became  a  component  part  of 
another  family.  She  no  longer  belonged  to  the  family 
of  her  birth,  but  to  that  of  her  purchaser.  The  Franks 
were  the  first  to  break  Salic  customs  and  to  permit  a 
father  to  settle  an  estate  upon  his  daughter  and  her 
children.64  Under  the  law  of  Gavelkind  as  it  existed 
in  Great  Britain,  daughters  never  inherited,  although 

64.  Montesquieu.—  Spirit  of  the  Laws. 


35°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  rights  of  even  an  illegitimate  son  were  recognized 
as  equal  to  those  of  legitimate  sons.  By  the  laws  of 
gavelkind,  property  could  not  descend  to  women,  but 
the  County  of  Kent  possessed  more  freedom  than  in 
any  other  part  of  England.  There  was  a  custom  of 
privilege  annexed  to  all  lands  of  this  kind  in  Kent, 
among  them,  that  the  wife  should  be  endowed  with  a 
moiety;  gavelkind  land  was  devisable  by  will.  Ordin- 
arily in  gavelkind,  property  was  kept  in  male  hands, 
descending  from  father  to  son.  The  very  name  gavel- 
kind is  said  to  bear  this  signification,  the  word  Kynd 
in  dutch  signifying  a  male  child,  thus  gife  eal  cyn, 
means  give  all  to  the  son.  Its  modern  signification  is 
the  custom  of  partition  of  property  among  males 
alone,  or  the  greatest  share  to  the  oldest  son. 

Lord  Coke  looked  upon  the  practice  of  gavelkind 
among  the  Irish  as  a  mark  of  their  descent  from  the 
ancient  Britons.  At  this  period  wives  were  not  en- 
titled to  dower,  thus  in  respect  to  property,  all  women 
of  the  family  were  equally  disinherited.  But  it  was 
the  opinion  of  Lord  Holt  that  by  the  Common  Law, 
both  before  and  after  the  conquest,  all  the  children, 
both  male  and  female  inherited  both  the  real  and  the 
personal  estate,  and  in  like  proportion.  But  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  I.  daughters,  in  case  there  were  sons, 
began  to  be  excluded  from  the  real  estate.  These 
laws,  so  essentially  Salic,  it  can  readily  be  seen, 
originated  in  the  mundium.  Passing  as  a  mund  woman, 
into  another  family,  the  succession  of  property  to  her 
under  this  slave  w  condition,  was  contrary  to  sound 
domestic  policy.      To  bestow  property    upon  a   daugh- 

65.  Women  in  England  were  for  more  than  a  thousand  years  legislated  for  as 
slaves.  Crimes  committed  by  men  which  could  be  atoned  for  by  a  fine,  were  by 
women  punished  with  burning  alive.  The  period  is  not  very  distant  when  she 
was  distinctly  legislated  for  as  a  servant,  and  but  on  a  level  with  chattel  slaves.— 
Hist.  Crime  in  England. 


WIVES  351 

ter  was  to  enrich  another  family  at  the  expense  of  the 
one  from  whom  the  slave-wife  was  purchased,  and  her 
disinheritance  was  but  a  logical  result  of  her  legal 
condition.  If  we  admit  the  premises  we  must  admit 
the  wisdom  of  her  exclusion  from  succession. 

It  is  curious  to  note  the  difference  in  woman's  posi- 
tion which  possession  of  property  has  ever  made.  This 
difference  especially  noticeable  during  Feudalism  in 
case  of  an  heiress  with  fiefs,  is  no  less  so  at  the  pres- 
ent day.  It  is  a  mark  of  an  unripe  civilization  that 
the  rights  of  property  have  ever  been  regarded  before 
those  of  person.  Walker66  over  sixty  years  since,  rec- 
ognized the  power  of  property  in  ameliorating 
woman's  condition,  then  declaring  that  the  first  step 
toward  an  acknowledgment  of  her  equality,  must  be 
a  recognition  of  her  rights  of  property;  his  broad 
knowledge  of  ancient  law  having  taught  him  the  close 
connection  of  property  rights  and  personal  rights. 
During  many  ages  battle  was  done  for  possessions  and 
the  protection  of  what  a  man  owned.  Even  the  war 
of  the  American  Revolution  was  begun  for  property 
rights  rather  than  for  those  of  person.  The  Stamp 
Act  and  the  tax  on  tea  roused  the  Colonies  to  resistance. 
A  woman  first  spoke  the  words  "inherent  rights,"  and 
by  the  time  nationality  was  proclaimed  the  colonists 
had  learned  far  enough  to  say  that  "governments  derive 
their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed." 
Consent  is  an  important  consideration  in  all  questions 
affecting  humanity,  and  is  one  in  which  woman  is  most 
deeply  concerned.  At  close  of  the  civil  war  Frederick 
Douglas  advised  colored  men  to  get  property.  He  had 
not  failed  to  learn  the  connection  between  property 
and  personal    rights.      Since    Mississippi,     in     1839,  67 

66.  American  Law,  1829. 

67.  Through  the  influence  of  Governor  AT Nuit,vrho  instituted  many  reforms. 


352  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Pennsylvania  and  New  York  in  1848,  and  Rhode  Island 
about  the  same  period,  secured  property  rights  to 
married  women,  there  has  been  a  great  and  rapidly  in- 
creasing change  in  woman's  position,  and  as  she  con- 
stantly enters  new  industries,  earning  and  controlling 
money,  we  find  her  as  constantly  more  free  and  re- 
spected. When  the  English  "Married  Women's  Pro- 
perty Bill,"  based  upon  that  of  New  York,  became  a 
law  a  few  years  since,  the  "London  Times,"  with  the 
perspicuity  of  our  great  thinker,  Walker,  said: 

"It  probably  portends  indirect  social  effects  much 
greater  than  the  disposition  of  property,  and  it  may 
in  the  end  pulverize  some  ideas  which  have  been  at 
the  basis  of  English  life.  Measures  which  affect  the 
family  economy  are  apt  to  be  'epoch  making';  and 
probably  when  the  most  talked  of  bills  of  the  session 
are  clean  forgotten  this  obscure  measure  may  be  bear- 
ing fruit." 

The  exception  of  married  women  in  the  demand  for 
political  rights  by  the  women  of  England, owes  its  origin 
to  the  old  monkish  theory  that  marriage  is  debasement, 
and  celibate  life  in  either  man  or  woman  a  much  higher 
condition.  After  the  passage  of  the  Emancipation  Proc- 
lamation, during  the  civil  war,  John  Stuart  Mill  declared 
that  married  women  was  the  only  class  of  slaves  re- 
maining on  earth.  As  long  as  a  condition  of  religious  or 
political  subjection  continues  for  her,  a  belief  in  the 
sanctity  of  womanhood  cannot  exist  and  crimes  against 
her  will  be  lightly  punished.  The  most  debased  men  of 
England  and  the  United  States,  if  arrested  for  cruelty  to 
wives,  agree  in  the  indignant  questioning  protest:  "Is 
she  not  my  own  that  I  should  punish  her  as    I  please?'* 

Such  has  been  the  power  of  the  priesthood  over  the 
consciences  and  lives  of  men,  that  we  find  whatever  is 
bad  in  the  laws  either  directly  or  indirectly  traceable  to 


wives  353 

their  influence.88  Our  Anglo  Saxon  forefathers  were 
early  amenable  to  religious  authority  and  for  a  period  of 
many  hundred  years  clerical  influence  was  exceedingly 
powerful  over  them.89  The  church  is  responsible  for 
the  severity  with  which  the  simplest  infraction  of  law  was 
visited  upon  the  most  humble  and  helpless  classes,  and 
the  greater  penalty  awarded  to  those  least  capable  of 
resistance.  It  was  for  the  free  man  of  low  estate,  for 
the  slave,  and  for  woman  that  the  greatest  atrocities 
were  reserved.  If  a  free  woman  stole  she  was  to  be 
thrown  down  a  precipice  or  drowned,  which  Pike  re- 
gards as  the  origin  of  dragging  witches  through  a  pond. 
If  the  thief  was  a  slave  and  stole  from  any  but  her  own 
master,  she  was  condemned  to  be  burnt  alive,  and  her  fel- 
low slaves  were  compelled  to  assist  at  the  incineration.70 
None  dared  to  speak  a  good  word  for  women  in  op- 
position to  church  teachings.  All  her  instincts  were  held 
as  evil.  As  the  law  and  the  father  robbed  the  daughter, 
so  the  law  and  the  church  alike  robbed  the  family.  By 
ancient  English  law,  as  before  noted,  every  person  who 
made  a  will  was  bound  to  remember  his  lord  with  the 
best  thing  he  possessed,  and  afterwards  the  church  with 
the  next  best  thing,  but  as  the  church  gained  power  it 
took  supreme  place  in  the  testament.71  The  peasant 
was  looked  upon  as  but  slightly  above  the  cattle  he  cared 
for.  A  certain  degree  of  sameness  in  material  and  in- 
tellectual conditions  everywhere  existed.  The  masses 
over  Christendom  were  alike  under  bondage   of   thought 

68.  There  was  no  distinction  between  offenses  against  the  church  on  one  hand, 
and  offenses  against  the  state  or  individual  on  the  other.  Cases  of  theft  and  sor- 
cery, like  those  of  witchcraft,  could  be  tried  in  the  church.  From  the  position  of 
the  clergy  as  law-givers,  it  follows  not  only  that  the  secular  laws  had  the  sanction 
of  religion,  but  that  religious  observance  were  enforced  by  the  secular  arm. 

69.  From  499  to  1066.     Herbert  Spencer.—  Descriptive  Sociology. 

70.  To  women  were  still  applied  those  punishments,  which  had  been  instituted 
by  the  men  whose  practice  it  was  to  buy  their  wives  and  sell  their  daughters 
Pike. — Hist.  Crime  in  Eng. 

71.  Bracton.—  De  Legibus  Anglice  1,  479. 


354  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

and  modes  of  action;  social  life  showed  no  marked 
change  for  many  hundred  years.  Freedom  was  an  un- 
known word,  or  if  by  chance  spoken,  found  itself  under 
the  ban  of  the  church  and  the  state.  Justice  was  un- 
thoughtof;  the  only  question  being,  "has  the  church  or- 
dered it?"  A  complete  system  of  espionage  existed  un- 
der both  church  and  state.  As  late  as  the  time  of  Alfred, 
in  England,  every  nine  men  were  under  charge  of  a 
tenth.  No  man  could  work  outside  of  his  father's  em- 
ployment to  which  he  was  bound;  at  nine  o'clock  curfew 
bell,  all  fires  and  lights  were  extinguished.  A  mechanic 
could  not  find  work  outside  of  his  own  village;  monas- 
teries and  castles  contained  all  there  was  of  power  and 
comfort.  As  late  as  the  reformation  we  find  the  condi- 
tion of  English  society  lax  and  immoral.  Henry  the 
VIII.  was  a  fair  type  of  the  nation;  the  court,  the  camp, 
the  church  were  all  in  line  moulding  the  sentiment  of 
community.  Although  Henry  had  declared  the  church 
to  be  an  entire  and  perfect  body  within  itself,  possess- 
ing authority  to  regulate  and  decide  all  things  without 
dependence  upon  any  foreign  power — meaning  the  pope, 
— he  did  not  fail  to  generally  define  the  supremacy  of 
the  church  as  united  with  and  dependent  upon  the  tem- 
poral government  of  the  realm;  the  king,  instead  of  the 
pope, becoming  its  spiritual  head.  Many  new  and  re- 
strictive canons  were  promulgated.  Under  Henry  the 
prohibitory  laws  regarding  nearness  of  relationship  in 
marriage  exceeded  those  of  the  Catholic  Church.  It  is 
but  a  few  decades  since  these  prohibitions  commenc- 
ing with  "a  man  shall  not  marry  his  grand-mother;"  "a 
woman  shall  not  marry  her  grand-father;"  and  extending 
down  to  remote  cousinship, — were  to  be  found  printed 
upon  the  fly  leaves  of  every  New  Testament.72 

72.  "The  reformation  altered,  but  did  not  better  the   condition  of  woman. 
Socially  it  rescued  her  from  the  priest  to  make  her  the  chattel  of  the  husband, 


wives  355 

For  a  long  period  after  the  reformation,  English 
women  were  not  permitted  to  read  the  Bible,  a  statute 
of  the  Eighth  Henry  prohibiting  '  'women  and  others 
of  low  degree/'  from  its  use.73  Apparently  for  the  pur- 
pose of  preventing  conversation  among  women  regard- 
ing the  tyranny  under  which  they  were  kept,  a  law  was 
passed  forbidding  the  residence  of  more  than  one  woman 
in  a  cottage,  and  this  after  the  Protestant  religion  had 
been  confirmed  as  that  of  the  realm.  As  late  as  Eliza- 
beth, 31-2.  it  was  held  a  "heinous  offence"  for  a  cottager 
to  give  a  home  to  his  own  widowed  mother  or  homeless 
sister.  The  especial  criminality  of  thus  "harboring" 
one's  female  relatives  lay  in  the  fact  of  their  being 
"masterless."  As  late  as  the  XVI.  century  the  law  still 
entered  houses,  and  magistrates  bound  out  to  servile 
labor  all  women  between  eleven  and  forty  years  of  age.7* 
The  degradation  of  women  under  the  reformation  was 
still  more  gross  than  under  Catholicism.  The  worship 
of  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  the  canonization  of  many 
women  as  saints  in  the  Romish  Calendar,  threw  a  certain 
halo  about  womankind  that  is  impossible  to  discover  in 
the  Protestant  Church,  or  since  the  reformation. 

The  church  of  whatever  name  taught  woman's  innate 
depravity  was  so  great  that  forcible  restraint  alone  pre- 
vented her  from  plunging  into  vice.  While  Christian 
women  outside  the  Levant  were  not  confined  in  a  harem 
under  watch  and  ward,  yet  various  methods  of  restraint 

and  doctrinally  it  expunged  her  altogether.  Martin  Luther  declared  that  the  two 
sacred  books,  which  especially  point  to  woman  as  the  agent  of  man's  final  redemp- 
tion—the books  of  Esther  and  Revelations— that  in  "so  far  as  I  esteem  them,  it 
would  be  no  loss  if  they  were  thrown  into  the  river." 

73.  "The  forefathers  of  Benjamin  Franklin  used  a  Bible  kept  fastened  under 
the  seat  of  a  four-legged  stool,  the  leaves  held  in  place  by  pack-threads.  When 
the  family  assembled  to  hear  it  read,  one  of  the  number  was  posted  as  sentinel 
some  distance  from  the  house  to  give  warning  of  any  stranger's  approach,  in 
which  case  the  stool  was  hurriedly  replaced  upon  its  legs,  and  some  one  seated 
upon  it  for  more  effectual  concealment  of  the  book." 

74.  Herbert  Spencer.—  Descriptive  Sociology,  England, 


35^  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

have  been  used  in  christian  lands  within  the  past  few 
centuries.  Among  the  most  noted  of  these,  the  "Chastity 
Belt,"  three  are  yet  known  to  be  in  existence.  One  is 
preserved  in  the  museum  at  Cluny,  France,  another  is 
in  keeping  of  the  Castle  of  Rosenburg,  Copenhagen;  the 
third  was  exhibited  in  the  United  States,  1884,  by  Dr. 
Heidmann's  traveling  museum.  According  to  tradition 
the  one  preserved  at  Cluny  was  in  use  during  the  XVI, 
Century,  in  reign  of  Francis  L,  who  ascended  the  throne 
January  1,  151 5;  the  remaining  two  in  Denmark  under 
Christian  IV.  in  the  seventeenth  century.  At  this  period 
Denmark  was  greatly  agitated  by  a  religious  war,  which, 
however,  did  not  include  woman's  freedom  in  its  de- 
mands. These  belts  are  hideous  proofs  of  the  low  estimate 
in  which  woman's  moral  character  was  held,  and  equally 
striking  evidence  of  man's  freedom  and  immorality. 

The  disrespect  shown  by  the  clergy  towards  marriage 
as  compared  with  the  celibate  condition,  has  influenced 
thought  in  many  singular  directions.  England's  married 
women  under  the  combined  influence  of  church  and 
state,  deprecate  the  claim  of  suffrage  for  themselves, 
although  asking  it  for  single  women  and  widows.75 

The  bill  referred  to  in  the  Memorial,  49  Vic,  extended 
Parliamentary   franchise  to  single  women  alone. 

Second  Sec.  For  all  purposes  of  and  incidental  to 
the  voting  for  members  to  serve  in  Parliament,  women 
shall  have  the  same  rights  as  men,  and  all  enactments 
relating  to,  or  concerned  in  such  election  shall  be  con- 
strued accordingly.  Provided  that  nothing  in  this  Act 
contained  shall  enable  women  under  coverture  to  be  reg- 
istered or  to  vote  at  such  elections. 

75.  The  English  Women's  Suffrage  Journal,  November,  1886,  reported:    "Mrs. 

rose  to  move  a  resolution.    After  reading  a  memorial,  she  said:    'Now, 

when  I  was  asked  to  add  a  few  words  of  support  to  the  memorial  I  ha^e  just  read* 
my  first  feeling  was  that  I  was  very  far  from  the  right  person  to  do  so,  inasmuch 
as  being  a  married  woman — and  therefore  disqualified— and  rightly  disqualified," 


wives  357 

The  word  "coverture"  expresses  a  married  woman's 
subordinate  condition,  both  civilly  and  religiously.76  It 
means,  under  the  power  of  the  husband;  controlled  by 
the  husband;  possessing  neither  personal  nor  individual 
rights;  a  being  not  allowed  to  use  her  own  judgment 
unless  such  judgment  is  ratified  by  the  husband.  Under 
coverture,  the  wife  can  make  no  contract  without  the 
husband's  consent,  the  law  holding  her  incompetent.  A 
woman  under  coverture  is  an  irresponsible  being  except 
in  case  of  crime.  When  married  women  refuse  to  seek 
the  same  freedom  for  themselves  they  ask  for  single 
women,  they  practically  endorse  the  judgment  of  church 
and  state  in  favor  of  celibacy.  When  married  women 
thus  ignore  their  equality  with  single  women,  they  prac- 
tically condemn  that  relation,  practically  affirm  the  supe- 
rior purity  of  a  celibate  condition.77  The  low  estimate 
of  women  in  England  as  late  as  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  is  shown  in  its  literature,  especially 
that  emanating  from  its  great  universities.  The  betrayal 
of  women  formed  the  basis  of  story  and  song;  not  con- 
tent with  portraying  their  own  vices,  these  men  did  not 
hesitate  to  put  a  plea  against  chastity  in  the  mouths  of 
mere  children.  Of  such  character  is  "A  Ballad"  eman- 
ating from  this  source,  but  professing  to  have  been 
"composed  by  Miss  Nelly  Pentwenzle,  a  young  lady  of 
15,"  to  be  sung  to  the  tune  of  "Scraps  of  Pudding." 

76.  The  coverture  of  a  woman  disables  her  from  making  contracts  to  the  pre- 
judice of  herself  or  her  husband  without  his  allowance  or  confirmation. 

77.  I  have  arrived  at  conclusions  which  I  keep  to  myself  as  yet,  and  only  utter 
as  Greek  phogagta  sunetots/,the  principle  of  which  is,  that  there  will  never  be  a 
good  world  for  women  till  the  last  monk,  and  therewith  the  last  remnant  of  the 
monastic  idea  of,  and  legislation  for,  woman,  i.  e.  the  Canon  Law  is  civilized  off 
the  face  of  the  earth.  Meanwhile  all  the  most  pure  and  high-minded  women  ir. 
England  and  Europe  have  been  brought  up  under  the  shadows  of  the  Canon  Law, 
and  have  accepted  it  with  their  usual  divine  self-sacrifice,  as  their  destiny  by  law 
of  God,  and  nature,  and  consider  their  own  womanhood  outraged  when  it,  their 
tyrant,  is  meddled  with.  Canon  Charles  Kingsley.— Letter  to  John  Stuart  MiU% 
June  17,  1849,  in  Life  and  Letters, 


358  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

A  periodical  entitled  "The  Old  Woman's  Magazine" 
printed  in  London,  without  date,  but  from  internal  evi- 
dence shown  to  belong  to  the  latter  part  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  forcibly  protests  against  the  destruction 
of  innocence,  which  was  the  chief  amusement  of  the 
men  of  this  period.     It  asks: 

Why  should  it  be  less  a  crime  to  deceive  an  inexperi- 
enced girl  whose  youth  renders  it  impossible  that  she 
should  know  the  world,  than  it  would  be  to  lead  a  blind 
man  to  the  brink  of  a  precipice? 

Thus  the  laws  and  customs  of  family  and  social  life, 
the  literature  of  different  periods,  the  habits  of  thought, 
the  entire  civilization  of  christian  centuries,  has  tended 
to  the  debasement  of  woman  and  the  consequent  de- 
struction of  moral  life.  The  world  stands  where  it 
does  to-day  upon  all  these  great  questions,  biased  by 
a  non-recognition  through  the  ages  of  the  sanctity  of 
womanhood,  and  a  disbelief  in  her  rights  of  person 
within  the  marriage  relation,  or  without;  taught,  as 
this  lesson  has  been,  by  the  church,  and  emphasized 
by  the  laws  of  the  state. 

There  have  ever  been  many  severities  connected 
with  dower  in  England.  By  old  law  if  a  widow  mar- 
ried within  a  year  from  the  death  of  her  husband  she 
forfeited    her    dower.78      This    law    accounts    for    the 

78.  Dowers  were  first  introduced  into  England  by  the  Danish  king,  Cnut  or 
Canute,  and  into  Denmark  by  Swein,  father  of  Canute,  who  bestowed  it  upon 
Danish  ladies  in  grateful  acknowledgment  of  their  having  parted  with  their  jewels 
to  ransom  him  from  the  Vandals.  For  account  of  Dowers,  see  History  of  Dowers: 
Grote.— History  0/  Greece  2,  1 12-13;  Alexander.— History  of  Women;  Lord  Karnes* 
Sketch  of  the  history  of  Man;  Histoire  des  Morales  des  Femmes.  In  Denmark, 
King  Sweinn  Forkbeard  was  the  first  to  give  woman  a  share  in  her  parents'  pro- 
perty. Saxo  Grammaticus  says,  The  king  was  taken  prisoner  by  the  Vinds  who 
demanded  so  large  a  sum  of  money  for  his  ransom,  the  men  of  Denmark  would 
not  pay  it,  so  their  king  remained  a  prisoner.  The  women  of  Denmark  sold  their 
ornaments  and  ransomed  him.  From  gratitude  the  king  decreed  that  afterwards 
daughters  should  inherit  one-third  of  their  father's  property.  Journal  of  Jurispru- 
dence. One  especial  right  belonged  to  wives  among  the  Northmen;  this  was  the 
custody  of  her  husband's  keys,  and  if  he  refused  them  the  wife  could  compel 


wives  359 

superstitious  sentiment  as  to  ill-luck  following  the 
woman  who  re-marries  within  a  year  and  a  day.  Like 
the  freedom  of  the  Roman  "Usus"  kept  up  by  a  three 
days'  absence  in  each  year,  this  extra  day  of  the  wid- 
ow's mourning  seems  to  have  been  added  as  security 
for  the  dower;  while  under  the  most  ancient  law  of 
christian  Europe,  the  widow  lost  her  dower  if  she 
married  again,  the  Turks  recognizing  the  greater  free- 
dom of  a  widow,  pay  her  who  re-marries,  a  sum  for 
parting  with  her  liberty. 

The  general  rule  of  dower79  held  that  when  arranged 
at  time  of  marriage,  although  the  husband  then  pos- 
sessed but  a  small  portion  of  freehold  and  afterwards 
made  great  acquisitions,  if  no  mention  of  new  pur- 
chases was  made  at  time  of  such  arrangement,  the 
widow  could  not  claim  more  than  the  third  part  of 
the  land  possessed  by  the  husband  at  time  of  marriage. 
In  like  manner  if  a  husband  had  no  land  and  endowed 
his  wife  with  chattels,  money,  or  other  things,  after- 
wards making  great  acquisitions  in  land,  she  could 
not  claim  dower  in  such  acquisition.  Neither  could 
a  woman  dispose  of  her  dower  during  her  husband's 
life.  This  was  quite  unlike  the  freedom  enjoyed  by  a 
wife  in  ancient  Wales  where  the  .dower  became  ab- 
solutely her  own,  to  dispose  of  as  she  pleased.  Under 
English  law  the  husband  during  the  lifetime  of  his 
wife  could  give  or  sell  or  alien  her  dower  in  any  way 
that  it  pleased  him  to  do,  and  the  wife  in  this,  as  in 
all  other  things,  was  obliged  to  conform  to  the  hus- 
band's will.  The  wife's  dower  right  in  personal  prop- 
erty can  be    aliened  by    the    husband    in    the    United 

him  bylaw  to  give  her  their  possession.  These  were  the  keys  of  the  store-room, 
chest,  and  cupboard. 

79.  The  law  of  dower  was  less  favorable  to  the  wife  in  the  13th  century  than 
ft  became  later. 


360  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

States.  During  the  wife's  lifetime  he  may  give,  sell, 
or  in  any  way  dispose  of  the  whole  of  his  personal 
property  absolutely,  and  the  wife  has  no  redress;  she 
is  not  held  as  having  any  right,  title  or  interest  in  it 
as  long  as  her  husband  lives.80  The  husband  can 
also  alien  his  real  estate,  subject  only  to  his  wife's 
dower  right  in  case  she  survive  him;  should  she  de- 
cease before  him  she  has  no  power  over  it.  The  law 
in  England  as  laid  down  by  Glanville,  was  that  in 
case  the  wife  withheld  her  consent  to  the  sale  of  prop- 
erty she  might  claim  her  dower  after  her  husband's 
death,  but  this  could  only  have  had  reference  to  real 
property,  and  is  the  same  in  the  United  States.  If 
the  wife  withholds  her  consent  to  the  sale  of  real  es- 
tate, it  still  can  be  sold  away  from  her  and  she  thus 
be  deprived  of  a  home.  It  is  merely  subject  to  her 
dower  right  in  the  value  of  the  property  at  time  of 
sale,  and  in  case  she  survives  her  husband;  should 
she  die  first,  she  has  no  redress.  Sales  of  this  char- 
acter are  constantly  made,  at  a  small  discount,  upon 
chance  of  the  wife's  non-survival.  As  dower  right  in 
real  estate  does  not  invest  the  wife  with  its  ownership  in 
fee,  but  merely  the  use  of  one-third  during  her  natural 
life,  it  will  readily  be  seen  how  very  small  is  the 
wife's  protection  in  dower-right  even  in  this  last  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Bracton  gives  two  reasons 
why  the  English  husband  could  sell  the  dower  as- 
signed to  the  wife  without  her  consent: 

First y  Because  a  wife  has  no  freehold  in  a  dower 
previous  to  its  being  assigned  to  her.  Second,  because 
she  cannot  gainsay  her  husband. 

As  late  as  the  last  quarter  of  the  present  century, 
the  learned  Professor  of  Jurisprudence  of  Cambridge 
University,  attempted  to  prove  that  it  was  no  reproach 

80.    See,  Reeves  p.   p.  156-6. 


WIVES  361 

against  woman's  intellect  that  she  was  prohibited  from 
making  a  contract  during  marriage;  although  failing 
in  this  attempt,  he  clearly  succeeded  in  proving  wo- 
man's condition  of  pecuniary  and  personal  slavery  in 
the  marriage  relation.     He  said: 

It  is  not  an  imputation  on  the  wife's  experience  or 
strength  of  mind,  but  is  solely  grounded  on  her  not 
being  assumed  by  common  law  to  have  sufficient 
command  of  her  purse  or  of  her  future  actions  where- 
with to  procure  materials  for  making  a  contract.  The 
legal  presumption  then  is,  that  she  did  not  intend  to 
make  one,  and  therefore  the  allegation  that  she 
did  make  a  contract  would  imply  on  the  face  of  it  a 
fraud.81 

The  legal  presumption  that  the  wife  has  neither 
sufficient  command  of  her  purse  or  of  her  future  ac- 
tions to  guarantee  an  intent  of  making  a  contract,  needs 
no  further  assertion  to  prove  her  enslavement.  The 
person  neither  possessing  control  of  property  or  of 
their  own  actions  is  a  slave,  regardless  of  or  under 
what  verbiage  of  law  or  custom  that  condition  is  rep- 
resented. Attempts  are  constantly  made  both  in  the 
United  States  and  England  to  take  from  women  the 
dower  right  now  accruing  to  them.  During  1883,  an 
Act  was  passed  taking  from  English  wives  all  dower 
right,  giving  the  husband  power  to  bar  the  wife  in 
all  cases;  and  scarcely  a  legislature  convenes  in  the 
United  States  that  has  not  a  similar  bill  introduced 
before  it.  As  dower  rights  increase  the  complication 
of  land  transfer,  just  as  soon  as  the  law  which  gave 
the  husband  the  power  to  bar  this  right  became  oper- 
ative in  England,  conveyancers  began  to  insert  a  de- 
barring clause  in  every  deed  of  conveyance,  thus  sys- 
tematically despoiling  the  wife  even  when  the  husband 
might  not  otherwise  have  been  so  disposed. 

8x.    Sheldon  Amos.—  Science  of  Law. 


362  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

As  "masterless  women,"  widows  in  England  have 
received  similar  contemptuous  treatment  as  accorded 
single  women,  to  whom  that  country  long  showed  such 
barbarity.  It  is  curiously  noted  by  Alexander82  that 
Moses  placed  widows  in  the  same  rank  as  harlots  and 
profane  women.83  The  law  of  tenancy  by  courtesy, 
which  gives  a  husband  rights  in  the  separate  property 
of  a  wife,  is  very  unjust  when  compared  with  the  dower 
rights  of  a  wife.  In  such  case,  provided  she  has  borne 
a  living  child,  even  should  such  child  breathe  but 
once,  the  husband  in  case  of  the  death  of  his  wife, 
holds  the  entire  real  estate  during  his  life,  as  "tenant 
by  courtesy. "  He  also  takes  the  whole  of  her  personal 
property  absolutely,  to  dispose  of  as  he  chooses.  In 
a  few  of  the  United  States,  the  wife  can  defeat  this 
by  will,  but  in  the  large  majority  of  christian  lands, 
the  full  rights  "of  tenancy  by  the  courtesy,"  still  pre- 
vail. Where  right  of  dower  still  prevails,  the  wife, 
if  there  are  children,  takes  but  one-third  of  the  per* 
sonal  property  absolutely,  one-half  if  there  are  no 
children,  the  rest  passing  to  collateral  heirs,  who  may 
be  the  husband's  most  distant  relatives.  In  case  no 
such  relative  can  be  found,  the  balance  escheats  to  the 
state,  although  in  the  State  of  New  York  the  widow, 
under  such  circumstances,  receives  $2,000  over  one 
half.  Of  the  real  property  she  has  the  use  of  but  one- 
third,  in  contradistinction  to  the  use  of  the  whole  of 
her  real  property,  which  goes  to  the  husband  by  "ten- 
ancy of  courtesy."  In  tenancy  by  courtesy  the  chil- 
dren are  robbed  of  the  mother's  real  estate  during 
the  life  of  the  father,  and  of  her  personal  property, 
forever.   In  enacting  property  laws,  man,  under  tenancy 

82.  History   of  Women,   1779. 

83.  Higgins  says  the  word  widow  comes  from  Vidya,  to  know. 


WIVES  363 

by  courtesy  robs  his  own  children.  The  law  of  inher- 
itance in  Spain,  that  country  distinguished  among 
European  nations  as  "Most  Christian  land,"  compels 
a  man  to  leave  four-fifths  of  his  property  to  his  chil- 
dren, but  does  not  make  it  obligatory  upon  him  to 
endow  his  wife  with  the  remaining  fifth.  Neither  has 
the  wife  a  dower  right  in  property  owned  by  her  hus- 
band at  time  of  the  marriage.  The  suit  of  a  Spanish 
widow  for  dower  right,  in  an  estate  of  several  mil- 
lions left  by  her  deceased  husband,  was  fully  reported 
by  the  New  York  daily  papers  within  the  past  few 
years.  Suddenly  reduced  from  affluence  as  the  wife 
of  this  man,  to  the  most  abject  poverty  as  his  widow, 
this  wife  and  mother  brought  suit  against  the  estate 
and  her  children,  who  receiving  all  the  property  by 
the  husband's  will,  left  her  absolutely  beggared. 

In  ancient  Ireland,  the  condition  of  woman  was  far 
superior  to  that  of  the  christian  women  of  England 
or  Scotland.  Two  forms  of  marriage  existed.  Under 
that  of  "Equal  Dignity,"  the  rights  of  the  contracting 
parties  were  the  same,  and  took  place  when  the  man 
and  woman  possessed  the  same  amount  of  land,  cattle, 
or  household  goods.  No  force  or  sale  accompanied 
it,  the  woman  giving  free  consent  equally  with  the 
man.  This  marriage  was  looked  upon  as  a  contract 
between  equals.  The  property  of  the  wife  did  not 
revert  to  the  husband.  She  retained  its  control,  loan- 
ing it  and  receiving  interest  entirely  free  from  the 
interference  of  her  husband.84  Ancient  Irish  law, 
also  secured  to  the  mother  equal  authority  with  the 
father  over  the  children  of  the  marriage.  There  is  no 
trace    of    that    arbitrary  control    over    both    wife  and 

84.    Ancient  Laws  of  Ireland,  Sanchus  Mor.  p.  p.  347-51. 


364  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

children  with  which  Christianity  endowed  the  father.86 
The  daughter  was  held  to  be  more  closely  re- 
lated to  the  father;  a  son  to  the  mother,  this  belief 
contributing  an  equality  of  right  between  the  sexes. 
These  laws  were  authoritative  over  the  whole  of  Ire- 
land until  the  invasion  of  the  Danes,  in  the  eight  cen- 
tury, (A.  D.  792). 

It  is  remarkable  what  effect  the  ownership  of  prop- 
erty by  woman  has  ever  had  in  ameliorating  her  legal 
condition.  Even  in  ancient  Ireland  the  wife  with- 
out possessions  became  the  slave  of  her  husband. 
Although  the  son  was  held  as  more  nearly  related  to 
his  mother,  this  ancient  code  provided  that  in  case  his 
parents  were  poor  and  he  had  not  wealth  enough  to 
support  both  father  and  mother,  he  was  to  leave  the 
latter  to  die  in  the  ditch,  but  was  to  carry  his  father 
back  to  his  own  home.86  Tradition  ascribes  this 
code  to  St.  Patrick  in  the  fifth  century.  Under  mod- 
ern christian  law,  the  legal  obligation  of  a  son  to  sup- 
port his  father  is  greater  than  it  is  to  support  his 
mother,  quite  in  opposition  to  the  old  Scandinavian 
(pagan)  law,  which  provided  for  the  support  of  the 
mother,  if  but  one  parent  could  be  cared  for.  Not  the 
least  among  the  wrongs  inflicted  upon  Ireland  by 
English  usurpation,  has  been  the  destruction  of  the 
wife's  rights  of  property.  The  right  of  the  Irish  wife 
to  deal  with  her  own  property  as  she  chose,  irrespec- 
tive of  her  husband's  consent,  was    expressly  declared 

85.  At  a  time  when  the  English  law  of  husband  and  wife,  which  now 
for  three  centuries,  has  been  substituted  for  the  Irish  law  in  this  country,  has 
been  condemned  by  a  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  as  unjust  towards 
the  wife,  and  when  the  most  advanced  of  modern  thinkers  are  trying  to  devise 
some  plan  by  which  wives  may  be  placed  in  a  position  more  nearly  approaching 
to  equality  with  the  husband,  it  is  interesting  to  discover  in  the  much  despised 
laws  of  the  ancient  Irish,  the  recognition  of  the  principle  on  which  efforts  are 
being  made  to  base  our  legislation  on  this  subject.  Preface  to  SanchusMor,  Vol.  2 

86.  Vol.  3#P.  l^—lbid. 


WIVES  365 

illegal  by  English  judges  at  the  beginning  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century. 

There  are  traces  of  separate  property  rights  for  wo- 
man, early  among  Aryan  peoples.  By  the  old  laws  of 
Wales,  a  wife  became  legal  owner  of  part  of  her  hus- 
band^ effects  immediately  upon  marrying  him,  and 
had  the  sole  disposal  of  this  portion  even  during  her 
husband's  life.  Debt  owed  by  a  husband  to  a  wife 
was  as  binding  on  him  and  his  heirs  and  executors  as 
a  debt  to  any  other  person.  After  the  English  laws 
were  introduced  into  Wales,  innumerable  disputes 
arose  upon  this  ground,  the  Welsh  woman  being  per- 
sistent in  her  determination  to  cling  to  her  old  rights, 
and  for  nearly  two  hundred  years  her  will  upon  this 
subject  was  stronger  than  the  will  of  English  legisla- 
tors, as  proven  by  legal  records.87  In  other  respects 
the  ancient  law  of  Wales  favored  woman.  A  husband's 
fetid  breath  was  held  as  good  cause  for  divorce  on 
part  of  the  wife,  who  in  such  case  took  with  her  the 
whole  of  her  property.  While  still  living  with  her 
husband,  the  Welsh  wife  possessed  the  right  to  three 
kinds  of  property,  cowyll,  gowyn,  and  sarand,  known 
as  her  three  peculiars.88  Old  Welsh  law  was  unique 
in  that  it   forbade  both  satisfaction  and  vengeance  for 

87.  Rambles  and  Studies  in  Old  South  Wales.— Wirt  Sikes. 

88.  The  three  peculiars  of  a  women,  are  her  cowyll,  her  gowyn,  and  her 
sarand;  the  reason  these  three  are  called  three  peculiars,  is  because  they  are 
the  three  properties  of  a  woman  and  cannot  be  taken  from  her  for  any  cause; 
her  cowyll  is  what  she  receives  for  her  maidenhood;  her  sarand  is  for  every 
beating  given  her  by  her  husband,  except  for  three  things;  and  those  three  for 
which  she  may  be  beaten  are,  for  giving  anything  she  ought  not  to  give;  for  being 
detected  with  another  man  in  a  covert;  and  for  wishing  drivel  on  her  husband's 
beard;  and  if  for  being  found  with  another  man  he  chastises  her,  he  is  not  to 
have  any  satisfaction  beside  that,  for  there  ought  not  to  be  both  satisfaction  and 
vengeance  for  the  same  crime;  her  gowyn  is,  if  she  detect  her  husband  with 
another  woman,  let  him  pay  her  six  score  pence  for  the  first  offiense,  for  the 
second,  one  pound;  if  she  detect  him  a  third  time  she  can  separate  from  him 
without  leaving  anything  that  belongs  to  her.  Aneurin  Owen,  Professor  of 
Welsh  Law. 


366  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  same  wrong.  Even  if  detecting  his  wife  in  adul- 
tery, for  which  he  should  chastise  her,  the  husband 
was  forbidden  any  satisfaction  besides  that.  In 
case  of  an  illegitimate  birth  the  law  provided  that  the 
man  should  wholly  maintain  the  child,89  a  species  of 
justice  not  found,  under  Christianity.  The  laws  of 
"Howell  the  Good,"  enacted  at  a  later  date  under  the 
supervision  of  the  church90  favored  the  man  at  the 
woman's  expense.  Under  these  laws  if  a  husband  and 
wife  separated,  the  father  took  two-thirds  of  the  chil- 
dren, the  oldest  and  the  youngest  falling  to  his  share, 
while  the  middle  one  fell  to  the  mother  A  woman 
was  not  admitted  as  surety,  or  as  a  witness  in  matters 
concerning  a  man.91  In  the  division  of  property  the 
daughters  received  only  one  half  the  amount  given  to 
the  sons. 

Under  the  christian  laws  of  England,  by  which  the 
property  of  a  married  woman  passed  entirely  into  the 
control  of  her  husband,  the  abduction  of  heiresses  in 
that  country  was  very  common  for  many  hundred  years, 
no  punishment  following  such  a  theft,  although  the 
most  compulsory  measures  were  used,  even  to  forcibly 
bending  the  bride's  head  in  affirmative  response  dur- 
ing the  marriage  ceremony.  She  was  a  woman;  the 
law  furnished  her  no  redress.  It  regarded  her  as  the 
legal  wife  of  her  abductor,  to  whom  she  thereafter 
under  this  christian  law,  owed  service  and  obedience. 
The  sole  right  to  her  person,  her  property,  her    chil- 

89.  The  law  enacts  that  she  ought  not  to  suffer  loss  on  account  of  the  man, 
since  she  received  no  benefit  from  him,  and  therefore  he  is  to  rear  the  child. 
Ancient  Laws  and  Institutions  of  Wales. 

90.  The  Welsh  laws  of  Howell  the  Good  were  enacted  by  four  laics  and  two 
clerks  who  vtere  summoned  lest  the  laws  should  ordain  anything  contrary  to 
scripture.    Ibid. 

91.  A  woman  cannnot  be  admitted  as  surety  or  as  a  witness  concerning 
man.    Ibid. 


WIVES  367 

dren  then  becoming  legally  invested  in  the  robber  hus- 
band. As  noted  in  the  opening  chapter,  the  abduction 
of  a  woman,  or  even  an  immodest  proposal  to  her, 
was  punished  in  older  un-christianized  Scandinavia, 
by  greater  or  lesser  outlawry;  rape  being  a  capital 
crime,  placing  the  culprit's  life  in  the  hands  of  any 
man.     He  was  outside  the  pale  of  law. 

France  under  frequent  changing  names  and  forms  of 
government,  and  with  a  broader  general  recognition 
each  year  of  human  rights,  is  yet  very  closely  allied 
to  the  barbarism  of  the  middle  ages  in  its  treatment 
of  woman,  and  its  conception  of  her  natural  rights. 
This  was  shown  even  during  the  revolution  of  1787, 
of  which  Madame  Roland  and  Charlotte  Corday  were 
such  central  heroic  figures.  Although  this  revolution 
established  an  equal  succession  between  sons  and 
daughters,  yet  it  did  not  tolerate  the  proposition  of 
Sieyes  and  Condorcet  that  woman  should  be  endowed 
with  the  suffrage.  One  hundred  years  later,  in  1887, 
a  bill  was  introduced  during  the  legislative  session, 
to  secure  to  woman  the  same  political  rights  accorded 
man.  This  bill  was  lost;  "Le  Gaulois, "  commenting 
upon  it,  declared  that  in  whatever  manner  the  ques- 
tion was  discussed,  it  appeared  grotesque  and  ridicu- 
lous. In  the  Legislative  Assembly  of  1851,  M. 
Chapot,  proposed  the  prohibition  of  the  right  of  peti- 
tion to  women  upon  all  subjects  of  a  political  nature. 
During  the  same  session,  Athenase  Coquerel,  the 
most  distinguished  member  of  a  Protestant  family  of 
clerygmen,  presented  a  bill  to  the  Chambers  excluding 
women  from  political  clubs.  Woman's  testimony  is 
not  accepted  in  regard  to  civil  acts.  They  cannot  at- 
test to  a  birth  or  a  death,  nor  is  their  testimony  ad- 
mitted in  the  identification    of  persons.     Neither    can 


368  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

they  become  members  of  the  family  council,  nor  are 
they  accepted  as  guardians  of  their  own  children.  It 
is  only  since  1886  that  their  condition  has  been  in  any 
way  ameliorated.  The  re-marriage  of  widows  is  for- 
bidden under  ten  months  after  the  husband's  death, 
and  until  within  the  last  decade,  divorces  were  of  great 
rarity.  The  oppressed  condition  of  woman  in  the 
marriage  relation,  was  notably  shown  by  the  vast  num- 
ber of  applications  for  release  from  the  hated  bond 
upon  the  passage  of  the  new  law;  a  number  so  great, — 
eleven  thousand, — that  two  years  scarcely  sufficed  to 
reach  them  all.  No  stronger  argument  against  the 
evils  of  an  indissoluble  marriage  is  required,  and  as 
the  greater  number  of  applicants  were  women,  it  is 
farther  evidence  of  woman's  degradation  under  chris- 
tian marriage  laws. 

According  to  the  famous  Code  Napoleon,  accepted 
by  France  as  her  modern  system  of  jurisprudence  and 
declared  (by  man)  to  be  nearly  perfect  in  its  provis- 
ions, every  child  born  outside  of  wedlock  is  deemed  to 
be  fatherless  unless  such  father  of  his  own  free  will 
formally  acknowledges  his  offspring.  While  fifty  per 
cent  of  all  children  born  in  Paris  are  illegitimate, 
statistics  prove  that  such  acknowledgment  takes  place 
but  once  in  fifty  births.  Thus  forty-nine  per  cent  of 
Parisian  children  under  the  Code  Napoleon,  theoret- 
ically come  into  the  world  without  fathers — they  are 
born  fatherless.  A  still  more  heinous  provision  of 
this  Code,  forbids  all  research  into  paternity.92  The 
father  of  an  illegitimate  child — rendered  illegitimate 
by  church  canons — is  held  as  both  morally  and  legally 
irresponsible  for  his  fatherhood.  Under  this  Code, 
upon  the  mother    falls    all    the   contumely    associated 

92.     Civil  Code,  Art  340. 


WIVES  369 

with  such  birth,  together  with  the  care  and  expense 
of  rearing  the  child.  We  cannot  be  surprised  at  the 
prevalence  of  infanticide,  a  crime  resulting  from  such 
unjust  legislation,  and  for  which  the  church  is  directly 
responsible.  In  the  whole  history  of  French  juris- 
prudence, not  a  single  case  can  be  found  where  the  father 
of  an  illegitimate  child  has  been  compelled  to  ac- 
knowledge his  offspring.93  Under  French  law,  wo- 
man is  a  perpetual  minor  under  the  guardianship  of 
her  own,  or  that  of  her  husband's  family.  Only  in 
case  of  the  birth  of  an  illegitimate  child  is  she  treated 
as  a  responsible  being,  and  then  only  that  discomfort 
and  punishment  may  fall  upon  her.  The  same  legal 
degradation  of  the  unmarried  mother,  the  same  pro- 
tection accorded  the  unmarried  father,  the  same  en- 
ticement of  the  law  for  man  to  assume  a  fatherhood 
freeing  him  from  accountability,  the  same  covert  con- 
tempt of  womanhood  and  of  motherhood,  also  exists 
in  Italy,  its  penal  code  forbidding  all  research  into 
paternity.  And  this  is  not  the  legislation  of  the 
middle  ages  but  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

But  French  disregard  for  the  rights  of  woman,  as 
already  shown,  far  preceded  the  Code  Napoleon;  that 
system  but  legally  emphasized  the  low  estimate  of 
the  feminine  we  have  traced  through  the  Salic,  Feud- 
al, and  Witchcraft  periods.  Louis  VII.  referring  to 
the  number  of  girls  born  in  his  dominions,  requested 
his  subjects  to  pray  unto  God  that  he  should  accord 
them  children  of  the  better  sex.  Upon  the  birth  of 
his    first    child,    Margaret,    who     afterwards    married 

93.  The  Woman  Question  in  Europe.— T.  Stanton.  This  law  of  France 
differs  greatly  from  the  old  Welsh  pre-christian  law,  which  threw  the  support  of 
an  illegitimate  child  upon  the  father.  Notwithstanding  the  responsibility 
thus  thrown  upon  her,  a  French  proverb  declares  that  "  the  most  reasonable 
woman  never  attains  the  sense  of  a  boy  of  fourteen." 


370  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

Henry  Courtmantel  of  England,  his  anger  was  so  great 
that  he  would  not  look  at  her;  he  even  refused  to 
see  his  wife.  He  afterwards  accorded  an  annual  pen- 
sion of  three  livres  to  the  woman  who  first  announced 
to  him  the  birth  of  a  son.  Although  five  hundred 
years  have  passed  since  the  graphic  portrayal  of  wo- 
man's condition,  in  the  ballad  of  the  Baron  of  Jauioz, 
we  find  the  Breton  farmer  whose  wife  has  given  birth 
to  a  daughter,  still  saying,  "my  wife  has  had  a  mis- 
carriage." Question  an  ordinary  French  peasant  in 
regard  to  his  family  and  if  the  father  of  girls  alone, 
he  will  reply,  "I  have  no  children,  sir  I  have  only 
daughters."9* 

During  the  feudal  period  parents  gave  themselves 
up  to  merry-making  and  rejoicing  upon  the  marriage 
of  the  last  of  their  daughters.95  Even  yet,  in  some 
countries,  the  birth  of  a  boy  is  announced  by  a  serv- 
ant wearing  a  white  apron  and  carrying  two  bouquets 
in  her  hand;  if  a  girl  she  carries  but  one;  in  some 
countries  the  father  of  a  boy  annually  received  the 
gift  of  two  loads  of  wood  from  the  state;  but  a  single 
one  if  the  child  was  a  girl.  Even  in  the  United 
States  we  yet  see  this  contempt  of  the  feminine  va- 
riously manifested,  although  the  kindness  and  affection 
of  girls  to  their  parents,  is  usually  more  notable,  than 
that  of  boys.96     Family   regard    is    usually    manifested 

94.  It  was  no  mere  accident  that  the  French  language  only  possessed  one 
word,  rhomme,  for  man,  and  human  being.  French  law  only  recognizes  man  as 
a  human  being.—  August  Bebel. 

95.  Legouve — History  of  Morals  of  Women, 

96.  The  baby  was  born  in  the  next  house,  and  of  course  I  was  interested, 
how  can  one  not  be  interested  when  one  of  these  little  angels  becomes  imprisoned 
in  the  earth  form  and  begins  a  career  that  makes  one  tremble  to  think  of?  Meet- 
ing the  father  a  few  hours  later  I  ask  the  customary  question. 

'•  Another  no  account  girl  to  be  supported,"'  he  said  gloomily,  and  passed  on  — 
Woman's  World.  A  father  of  experience  spoke  differently:  "  My  gals  never 
forget  me.  They  married  and  went  away  to  their  own  homes:  and  though  they 
were    none  of   them  well-to-do,  yet  not  one  of   them  ever  saw  the  time  she 


WIVES  371 

in  the  descending,  rather  than  the  ascending  line,  yet 
Herbert  Spencer  declares  that  full  civilization  is  de- 
pendent upon  the  respect  and  affection  shown  to  pa- 
rents. France  is  not  the  only  christian  land  that  in- 
validates a  woman's  testimony,  receiving  the  asser- 
tion of  the  woman  with  less  authority  than  the  denial 
of  the  man.  In  Scotland  in  case  of  an  illegitimate 
birth,  the  accused  man  is  allowed  to  clear  himself 
upon  oath,  in  opposition  to  that  of  the  woman.  Under 
Scottish  law  the  child  born  outside  of  marriage  was 
formerly  compelled  to  do  penance  in  church  for  the 
sins  of  his  parents.  Such  has  been  the  justice  of 
Christianity  to  women  and  children  during  the  ages. 
These  methods  of  Christianity  were  in  great  contrast 
to  those  of  heathendom.  The  early  Anglo-Saxon 
(pagan)  laws  contained  provisions  for  the  punishment 
of  assaults  upon  women.  Crimes  against  her  were 
punished  by  greater  or  less  outlawry  according  to  the 
attendant  circumstances.  Old  Scandinavia  possessed 
many  laws  for  the  protection  of  woman.  It  has  some- 
times been  asserted  that  these  laws  were  a  dead  letter, 
so  many  instances  of  loose  connections  are  recorded 
in  the  Iceland  Sagas.  It  is,  however,  a  question  of 
fact  that  these  illegal  relations,  according  to  the  same 
Sagas  were  much  more  frequent  after  the  introduction 
of  Christianity  than  before.97  Roman  law  presumed 
that  no  woman  went  astray  without  the  seduction  and 
arts  of  the  other  sex,  upon  whom  alone  the  punish- 
ment fell.  Under  old  Saxon,  Gothic  and  Scandinavian 
law,  rape  was  punished  by  death.    Untjer  the  Conqueror, 

wouldn't  steal  a  dollar  from  her  husband  to  give  to  fathfc-  or  mother;  but  it  isn't 
so  with  the  boys.  They  never  knew  they  owed  me  anythmg;  they  never  put  their 
hands  in  their  pockets  for  me:  they  never  laid  awake  fl»  nights  thinking  how  to 
scrimp  household  expenses  to  get  me  or  mother  a  present  Uke  the  gals  did.  And 
yet  when  I  was  araisin'  'em  I  thought  one  boy  was  worth  a  dozen  gals." 
97.    See  Scandinavian  Jurisprudence. 


372  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

its  punishment  was  castration  and  loss  of  the  eyes, 
which  continued  English  law  until  after  Bracton  wrote 
in  time  of  Henry  III.  A  lighter  punishment  then 
superseded  it,  but  the  effects  of  this  leniency  was  so 
evil  the  old  penalty  was  restored.  While  forbidding 
woman  control  of  her  own  property,  common  law,  un- 
der one  of  those  anomalous  renderings  which  mark 
the  constant  injustice  of  Church  and  State  towards 
woman,  held  twelve  years  as  the  age  of  female  discre- 
tion or  consent,  rape  after  that  age  not  being  regarded 
as  criminal. 

Germany  with  sudden  strides  has  coalesced  from 
a  number  of  independent  principalities  through  the 
management  of  him  of  the  iron  hand,  into  a  magnificent 
empire,  based  upon  the  destruction  of  human  life.  In 
this  empire,  where  war  underlies  all,  we  find  woman 
much  more  deeply  degraded  than  during  the  old  pagan 
days,  when  as  chieftain  and  prophetess  her  voice  was 
heeded  even  upon  the  battle-field.  Now,  while  men 
are  preparing  to  kill  other  men,  the  agriculture  of  the 
country  and  the  lowest  forms  of  mechanical  labor  fall 
into  her  hands.  But  it  is  not  as  responsible  owner 
we  thus  find  her;  she  cultivates  the  fields  as  a  drudge, 
upon  whom  falls  all  the  most  severe  portion  of  work. 
Equally  in  Germany  as  in  other  christian  lands,  is  the 
wife  looked  upon  as  the  servant  of  the  husband,  to 
whom  she  bears  children  that  are  his  alone,  and  to 
whom  greater  deference  is  paid  by  the  mother  when 
a  large    number  of  little     ones    call   him     father.98     It 

98.  A  story  is  told  by  an  American  traveller,  of  a  party  met  upon  the 
cars,  the  mother  a  delicate  little  personage,  the  father  stout  and  strong. 
Upon  leaving  the  train  he  walked  off  incommoded  by  a  single  traveling 
impedimenta,  while  the  wife  was  almost  hidden  under  the  pack  she  was 
carrying.  With  indignation  the  American  asked,  "why  do  you  not  let  the 
man  take  some  of  these  things?"  What!  and  he  the  father  of  a  family?* 
was  the  surprised  answer. 


wives  373 

has  been  the  custom  to  reward  a  husband  in  propor- 
tion to  the  number  of  children  borne  him  by  his  wife, 
and  it  is  but  a  year  since  a  Parisian  journalist  sug- 
gested that  for  each  additional  child  borne  by  his 
wife,  the  husband  should  be  allowed  half  a  vote.  In 
Germany  as  under  the  common  law  of  England,  the 
wife  is  subject  to  chastisement  by  her  husband,  its 
severity  being  left  to  his  discretion.  But  the  height 
of  barbaric  absurdity  and  wickedness  is  found  in  that 
provision  of  the  Prussian  common  law  which  decrees 
that  a  husband  can  determine  the  length  of  time  his 
wife  must  nurse  her  child.  As  might  be  expected,  at 
his  death  the  wife  is  not  regarded  capable  of  caring 
for  the  children,  and  must  accept  a  guardian  for  them; 
the  law  going  so  far  as  to  declare  her  under  age, 
similarly  to  that  French  law  which  makes  woman  a 
perpetual  minor.  It  matters  not  if  the  family  prop- 
erty all  came  through  the  wife,  or  was  accumulated 
by  her  labor,  she  is  still  held  as  not  of  sufficient  judg- 
ment for  its  control.  In  Prussia,  woman  is  still  for- 
bidden to  take  part  in  political  or  other  public  meet- 
ings." 

99.  It  is  unnecessary  to  let  the  whole  many-colored  map  of  German  common  law 
pass  in  review;  a  few  specimens  will  suffice.  According  to  German  common  law 
woman  is  everywhere  in  the  position  of  a  minor  with  regard  to  man;  her  husband 
is  her  lord  and  master,  to  whom  she  owes  obedience  in  marriage.  If  she  be  dis- 
obedient, Prussian  law  allows  a  husband  of  "low  estate"  to  inflict  moderate 
bodily  chastisement.  As  no  provision  is  made  for  the  number  or  severity  of  the 
blows,  the  amount  of  such  chastisement  is  left  to  the  sovereign  discretion  of  the 
man.  In  the  communal  law  of  Hamburg  the  regulation  runs  as  follows:  "The 
moderate  chastisement  of  a  wife  by  her  husband  is  just  and  permissible."  Simi- 
lar enactments  exist  in  many  parts  of  Germany.  The  Prussian  common  law 
further  decrees  that  the  husband  can  determine  the  length  of  time  during  which 
a  woman  must  suckle  her  child.  All  decisions  with  regard  to  the  children  rest 
frith  the  father.  When  he  dies  the  wife  is  everywhere  under  the  obligation  of 
accepting  a  guardian  for  the  children;  she  is  decided  to  be  under  age,  and  inca- 
pable of  conducting  the  education  of  children  alone,  even  when  their  means  of 
support  are  derived  entirely  from  her  property  or  her  labor.  Her  fortune  is 
managed  by  her  husband,  and  in  cases  of  bankruptcy  is  regarded  in  most  states 
as  his  and  disposed  of   accordingly,  unless  a  special  contract  has  been  made 


374  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Morganatic  or  left-hand  marriage  still  continues  the 
custom  in  Germany.  Under  its  provisions  the  wife 
does  not  take  the  husband's  rank,  nor  do  the  children 
inherit  the  father's  property,  as  they  are  not  regarded 
as  of  full  legitimacy.  This  form  of  marriage  is  rec- 
ognized by  the  civil  law  of  Germany,  and  is  sustained 
by  the  church.  The  custom,  at  first  confined  to  princes, 
gradually  extended  to  the  higher  aristocracy,  and  as 
the  moral  perceptions  of  a  nation  bends  itself  to  uni- 
son with  civil  law,  the  inferior  gentry  began  to  con- 
tract marriages  of  this  kind.  Under  a  morganatic  union 
woman  is  still  more  debased  than  in  the  ordinary  mar- 
riage relation.  Aside  from  the  ceremony,  the  wife 
is  scarcely  other  than  a  concubine.  The  children  of 
the  morganatic  marriage  do  not  bear  the  father's  name, 
nor  inherit  from  him,  under  the  law  of  the  state. 
Neither  they  nor  the  wife  have  more  lasting  claim  up- 
on him  in  these  respects  than  had  the  concubines 
known  as  "the  Honored  Ones"  upon  the  priestly  de- 
stroyers of  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries. 

before  marriage.  When  landed  property  is  entailed  on  the  eldest  child,  a 
daughter  has  no  rights,  as  long  as  husband  or  brothers  are  alive;  she  cannot  suc- 
ceed unless  she  has  no  brothers  or  has  lost  them  by  death.  She  cannot  exercise 
the  political  rights  which  are  as  a  rule  connected  with  landed  property,  unless  in 
some  exceptional  cases,  as  for  instance  in  Saxony,  where  communal  regulations 
in  the  country  allow  her  to  vote,  but  deny  her  the  right  of  being  elected.  But 
even  this  right  is  transferred  to  her  husband  if  she  marry.  In  most  states  she  is 
not  free  to  conclude  agreements  without  the  consent  of  her  husband,  unless  she 
be  engaged  in  business  on  her  own  account,  which  recent  legislation  permits  her 
to  do.  She  is  excluded  from  every  kind  of  public  activity.  The  Prussian  law 
concerning  societies,  forbids  school-boys  and  apprentices  under  eighteen,  and 
women  to  take  part  in  political  associations  and  public  meetings.  Until  within 
the  last  few  years  women  were  forbidden  by  various  German  codes  to  attend  the 
public  law  courts  as  listeners.  If  a  woman  becomes  pregnant  of  an  illegitimate 
child  she  has  no  claim  on  support  if  she  accepted  any  present  from  the  father  at 
the  time  of  their  intimacy.  If  a  woman  is  divorced  from  her  husband,  she  con- 
tinues to  bear  his  name  in  eternal  memory  of  him,  unless  she  happens  to  marry 
again. 

August  Bebel.— Woman  in  the  Past,  Present  and  Future. 


wives  375 

Several  notable  instances  of  morganatic  marriages 
have  occurred  within  the  present  century.  It  is  but 
a  few  years  since  the  Grand  Duke,  Louis  IV.  of 
Hesse-Darmstadt,  son-in-law  of  Queen  Victoria,  made 
a  morganatic  marriage  with  Madame  de  Kalamine, 
whose  lover  he  was  long  known  to  have  been,  and 
with  whom  he  had  previously  lived  outside  of  this  re- 
lation, she  having  borne  him  several  children.  From 
the  high  position  of  the  morganatic  husband,  and  be- 
cause of  the  previous  relationship  of  the  parties,  this 
marriage  became  the  talk  of  all  Europe,  and  to  some 
extent  of  the  United  States.  Queen  Victoria  herself 
did  not  escape  criticism,  notwithstanding  the  prudery 
for  which  she  is  famed,  because  of  her  entertaining  the 
Grand  Duke  at  Windsor  soon  after  this  marriage  un- 
accompanied by  his  wife,100  for  the  purpose,  it  was 
intimated,  of  placing  him  under  the  influence  of  Prin- 
cess Beatrice.  The  very  fact  of  such  suggestion, 
whether  true  or  not,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  Queen 
Victoria  universally  conceded  a  prude  in  reference 
to  infractions  of  the  moral  law  by  those  of  her  own 
sex,  received  the  Grand  Duke  at  her  especial  home 
of  Windsor  soon  after  his  morganatic  marriage,  is  a 
vivid  commentary  upon  the  two  codes  of  morals  extant 
in  Christendom  and  their  influence  even  upon  woman 
herself.  Morganatic  marriage  degrades  the  wife  of 
the  right  hand  ceremony  equally  with  her  of  the  left 
hand,  as  it  is  a  recognition  by  the  law  of  a  christian 
country  to-day  of  man's  right  to  become  a  bigamist, 
provided  he  but  gives  his  left  hand  instead  of  his 
right,  to  the  bride  during  the  marriage  ceremony.  It 
is  a  system  of  legalized  concubinage  under  protestant- 
ism, which  throws  the  shield  of  protection  around  man 
in  illicit  relations,  and  like  all  other  forms  of  woman's 

ioo.    Who,  indeed,  would  not  have  been  received  by  the  queen. 


376  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

degradation,  it  reaches  back  for  authority  to  that  re- 
ligious teaching  which  proclaims  woman  to  have  been 
created  inferior  and  subordinate  to  man.  Because  of 
woman's  former  superior  position  there,  no  country 
but  Germany  can  as  fully  show  the  degradation  of 
woman  under  Christianity.  Not  from  pagan  Greece 
can  more  vivid  illustration  of  her  moral  degradation  be 
shown,  while  pagan  Rome  shines  clear  and  bright  be- 
side the  Germanic  races  of  to-day.  While  even  left- 
handed  marriages  among  the  higher  classes  are  en- 
couraged and  protected,  yet  among  the  lower  orders 
in  Germany  the  ordinary  marriage  is  cumbered  with  so 
many  restrictions,  as  to  have  become  almost  an  im- 
possibility, and  no  disgrace  or  loss  of  character  falls 
upon  the  girl  of  this  class  who  becomes  a  mother  out- 
side of  legal  prevision,  but  such  motherhood  upon  the 
contrary  is  looked  upon  as  the  means  of  a  higher  po- 
sition and  greater  wages  as  nurse.  As  amme  in  a  rich 
or  noble  family  she  becomes  a  person  of  arrogance, 
part  of  the  pomp  and  show  of  the  house.101 

Despite  these  wrongs  of  the  ages  towards  woman,  of 
late  so  vividly  presented,  we  still  find  both  Church 
and  State  opposing  a  free  discussion  of  the  question. 
Within  the  last  decade  two  northern  European  countries 
have  strangely  exhibited  such  hostility,  the  opposition 
coming  upon  ground  of  woman's  surpassing  sinfulness.102 

101.  A  German  girl  continues  to  be  a  maid-of-all-work  until  circumstances 
elevate  her  to  a  higher  position.  She  becomes  a  mother,  and  this  opens  a  fresh 
career  to  her  as  an  amme  or  wet  nurse.  Her  lines  thenceforward  fall  in  pleasant 
places.  An  amme  is  a  person  of  consideration.  No  disgrace  or  loss  of  character 
is  attached  to  the  irregularity  of  conduct  which  often  is  the  origin  of  her  promo- 
tion to  a  higher  sphere.  Her  wages  are  quadrupled;  her  fare  by  comparison  is 
sumptuous;  she  can  never  be  scolded;  she  is  called  upon  to  fulfill  but  one  duty. 
The  occupation  is  so  much  more  remunerative  than  ordinary  service,  that  one 
can  scarcely  be  surprised  if  plenty  of  women  are  found  ready  and  willing  to 
follow  the  trade.  With  them  the  child  is  only  a  means  to  an  end.  Marriage 
among  the  lower  orders  in  Germany  is  cumbered  about  with  so  many  restrictions 
and  conditions,  that  it  has  come  to  be  looked  upon  as  almost  an  impossibility. 

ioa.    When  Miss.  Aarta  Hansteen,  a  Norwegian  lady  announced  her  purpose 


wives  377 

But  the  most  notable  opposition  has  been  against  the 
works  of  two  eminent  literary  men.  "The  Doll's 
House"108  by  Ibsen,  the  dramatic  poet  of  Norway,  attack- 
ing the  irresponsible  position  of  the  wife  under  present 
marriage  law,  brought  about  the  social  ostracism  of  its 
author.104  Sweden's  supremely  great  thinker  of  the  pres- 
ent century,  August  Strindberg,  recently  published  a 
work  entitled  "Giftas"(to  marry),  which  incidentally 
treated  of  the  influence  of  religion  upon  this  relation.105 
The  State  authorities  at  once  ordered  its  confisca- 
tion.106 Instead  of  a  Papal  Librorum  Prohibitorum,  it 
fell  under  the  censure  and  prohibition  of  a  Protestant 
State.  But  no  more  ready  method  for  increasing  its 
circulation  could  have  been  devised  ;  so  rapidly  was 
the  first  edition  of  four  thousand  sold  that  only  four 
hundred  fell  into  the  grasp  of  the  censorious  govern- 
ment. In  order  to  escape  the  farther  penalty  of  im- 
prisonment that  had  been  pronounced  against  him, 
the  author  was  compelled  to  temporarily  leave  the 
country.  But  his  work  was  not  without  effect  upon 
the  minds  of  his  countrymen,  and  upon  his  return  a 
few  months  later,  a  great  demonstration  in  his  honor 
took  place.  Strindberg  denned  the  rights  of  woman  as 
those  which    came    to    her    by  nature    but    of    which, 

of  lecturing  on  woman's  natural  equality  with  man,  she  met  little  or  no  support, 
the  church  strenuously  opposing  on  ground  of  woman's  original  curse. 

103.    Translated  into  English  under  title  of  "  Nora,"  by  Miss.  Frances  Lord. 

104  So  profound  was  its  effect  that  visiting  invitations  were  coupled  with  the 
request  not  to  speak  of  the  work. 

105.  Marian  Brown  Shipley,  an  American  lady,  long  a  resident  of  Sweden 
and  thoroughly  conversant  with  its  literature  and  tone  of  thought,  said  of  it,  "A 
more  glorious  thing  has  not  been  done  in  Sweden  for  centuries.  Strindberg  hag 
defied  church  and  state,  striking  both  to  their  foundations  with  his  merciless 
satire,  and  rallied  the  Swedish  people  at  a  single  stroke." 

106.  Bjornsen  said,  "  The  confiscating  of  August  Strindberg's  book  Gi/tas, 
is  the  greatest  literary  scandal  in  the  North  in  my  time.  It  is  worse  than  when 
one  wished  to  put  me  in  the  house  of  correction  on  account  of  the  King;  or  thrust 
out  Ibsen  from  the  society  of  honorable  people  for  gjengungerd  (Ghosts)." 


37^  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

through  a  perverted  social  order  she  had  been  de- 
prived. He  declared  that  woman's  desire  for  deliver- 
ance was  the  same  as  man's  restless  desire  for  deliv- 
erance. Let  us,  said  he,  therefore  emancipate  man 
from  his  prejudice  and  then  woman  will  certainly  be 
freed.  To  that  end  it  is  necessary  to  work  together 
as  friends  not  as  enemies. 

That  a  work  of  this  moderate  character,  should  fall 
under  the  ban  of  a  protestant  government,  in  the  last 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  should  be  confiscated 
and  its  author  banished,  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  de- 
graded condition  of  woman  in  the  marriage  relation, 
and  of  the  power  still  exerted  for  the  continuance  of 
this  subjection.  Opposition  to  discussion  of  this  ques- 
tion in  Sweden,  is  more  strange  in  view  of  the  excess 
of  women  in  the  population,  as  they  outnumber  the 
men  some  40,000;  while  of  single  women  over  fifteen, 
there  are  259,000.  Despite  the  fact  of  this  excess, 
impossible  to  provide  for  by  marriage  even  were  that 
condition  one  of  equity  and  equality,  all  effort  towards 
opening  occupations  to  them,  or  the  avenues  of  edu- 
cation, still  meets  with  resistance  from  the  church. 
The  only  opponent  of  Mr.  Berner's  Bill,  1882,  for  per- 
mitting women  to  take  the  first  two  degrees  in  the 
University,  those  of  Arts  and  Philosophy,  was  from 
a  clerygman.  The  bill  passed  the  Odelstling,  one 
of  the  two  Chambers  of  the  Storthing,  with  only  his 
dissentent  voice.107  It  received  the  unanimous  vote 
of  the  other  house,  the  Sagthing,  April  21,  becoming 
a  law  June  15  of  that  year. 

Russia,  which  we  are  accustomed  to  regard  as  less 
than  a  half  civilized  country,  gives  evidence  of  an 
early  civilization  which  in  the  field  of  morals  reached 

107.    March  30,  1882. 


wives  379 

a  high  place.  Samokversof,  a  Russian  author,  has 
made  a  rich  collection  relating  to  pre-histroic  times, 
proving  that  as  early  as  the  first  centuries  of  this  era, 
the  Slavonians  lived  in  large  societies,  possessed  for- 
tified towns  with  treasures  of  gold  and  silver,  silk, 
embroidered  tissues,  iron  weapons,  ornaments  of  gold, 
silver,  bronze  and  bone;  while  sickles,  and  the  grasses 
of  wheat,  oats,  and  barley,  found  in  the  graves  of 
South  Russia,  show  this  people  even  to  have  been  de- 
voted to  agriculture.  The  early  history  of  Russia 
proves  that  women  then  held  influential  positions  in 
the  family,  in  the  church,  in  the  state;  as  was  the  case 
under  the  ancient  common  law  of  England,  so  woman 
among  the  ancient  Slavs  possessed  the  right  of  inher- 
itance and  the  power  of  dividing  such  inheritance  with 
her  brothers.  In  the  State  we  find  woman's  wisdom 
at  early  date  still  continuing  to  shape  the  policy  of 
the  Russian  empire ;  to  the  wise  statesmanship  of  the 
Czarina  Olga  is  the  unchanging  plan  of  that  country 
for  the  ultimate  possession  of  Constantinople  due. 
Visiting  the  Patriarch  of  the  East,  during  the  tenth 
century,  she  at  once  perceived  the  vast  importance  of 
Constantinople  to  the  power  desiring  universal  domin- 
ion; the  possession  of  that  city  giving  control  of  the 
Dardanelles,  of  Asia  Minor,  and  Europe  itself.  Thence- 
forth she  sought  its  annexation  or  seizure  and  her 
policy  became  that  of  the  Russian  nation,  which  for 
more  than  eight  hundred  years  has  made  the  ultimate 
possession  of  Constantinople  the  great  object  of  its 
ambition.  Nor  has  Olga's  statesmanship  less  influenced 
the  entire  European  continent,  the  allied  powers  con- 
stantly struggling  to  defeat  Russia's  aggressive  plan, 
through  maintenance  of  the  "sick  man"  upon  his 
throne. 


380  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

From  the  advent  of  Christianity,  forced  upon  the 
Slav  peoples  a  thousand  years  since  by  Vladimir,  their 
baptism  taking  place  by  tens  of  thousands  as  driven 
into  the  rivers  and  streams  mid-deep,  priests  upon  the 
banks  recited  the  baptism  formula,  a  change  was 
noticeable.  As  soon  as  the  thorough  establishment  of 
the  Byzantine  church  in  Russia,  which  took  no  in- 
considerable period,  it  being  brought  about  by  force 
rather  than  free  will,  its  priests,  like  those  of  the 
Western  Church,  directed  their  principal  efforts  to- 
wards control  of  the  marriage  relation,  and,  through 
that,  of  the  family.  Nor  are  we  to  regard  this  as 
strange  inasmuch  as  every  form  of  Christianity  regards 
woman  as  an  inferior  being,  the  creator  of  original 
sin,  rendering  the  sacrifice  of  a  God  necessary  in  order 
to  re-establish  the  equilibrium  overthrown  by  her.108 
Edmond  Noble,  in  tracing  the  cause  of  the  present 
social  upheaval  in  that  empire,  says:109 

Scarcely  had  the  priests  of  the  Greek  Church  begun 
their  teaching  of  the  new  faith  when  change  began  to 
unsettle  the  position  of  woman  and  burden  her  rela- 
tionship to  the  family  with  a  sense  of  inferiority  *  *  * 
her  status  falling  with  the  natural  extension  of  the 
ecclesiastical  policy.  The  Russian  woman  at  last 
became  the  slave  of  her  Christian  husband ;  as  much 
his  chattel  as  if  she  had  been  purchased  at  market  or 
captured  in  war. 

An  examination  of  history  proves  that  in  Christian 
Russia  as  in  Christian  England  the  husband  could  re- 
lease himself  from  the  marriage  bond  by  killing  his 
wife,  over  whom  under  christian  law  he  had  power 
of  life  and  death.  Her  children,  as  to-day  in  Christian 
England  and  America,  are  not  under  her   control;  she 

108.  Russian  Revolt 

109,  A  Russian  writer  of  the  17th  century  said:  "As  Eve  did  wrong,  so  the 
whole  race  of  women  become  sinful  and  the  cause  of  evil." 


WIVES  381 

is  to  bear  children  but  not  to  educate  them,  for,  as 
under  Catholic  and  Protestant  Christianity,  women 
are  looked  upon  as  a  lower  order  of  beings,  of  an 
unclean  nature.  The  assertion  of  Agathes  the 
Sophist  that  he  detected  the  smell  of  her  whose  hands 
had  milked  the  cow,  is  more  than  paralleled  under 
Greek  Christianity,  woman  not  even  being  allowed  to 
kill  a  fowl  under  assertion  that  should  she  so  do  the 
meat  would  become  poisonous.  Wife  beating  en- 
joined as  a  religious  duty  became  so  common,  says 
Noble,  that  love  was  measured  by  it,  "The  more 
whippings  the  more  love."  "The  Domstroii,"  a  house- 
hold guide,  compiled  by  a  dignitary  of  the  Greek 
Church  in  time  of  Ivan  the  Terrible,  counseled  use  of 
the  rod  to  keep  wives,  children,  and  servants  in  subjec- 
tion. By  it  husbands  were  given  almost  unlimited 
power  over  wives,  who  were  not  even  permitted  to 
attend  church  without  the  husband's  consent.  The 
prominent  ideas  regarding  woman  under  Byzantine 
Christianity  have  been  her  uncleanliness,  her  sinful- 
ness and  the  small  value  of  her  life.110  She  is  re- 
garded as  a  being  of  lower  order  than  man,  and  as 
looked  upon  in  a  different  light  by  God. 

Where  marriage  is  wholly  or  partly  under  church 
control,  its  very  form  degrades  woman,  her  promise 
of  obedience  not  yet  having  passed  away.  In  the 
old  Covenanter  period  of  Scotland  the  records  give 
a  still  more  debased  form,  in  which  the  man  as  head 
was  declared  united  to  an  ignoble  part,  represented  by 
the  woman.  But  in  modern  times,  both  in  Catholic 
and  Protestant  countries  a  more  decent  veil  is  thrown 
over  this  sacrifice  of  woman  than  in  the  Greek  Church, 

no.  She  was  spoken  of  as  a  "  Vanity  itself,"  "  A  storm  in  the  home,"  A  flood 
that  swells  everything,"  "  A  serpent  nourished  in  the  bosom,  "A  spear  penetrat- 
ing the  heart,"  "A  constantly  flying  arrow." 


382  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

where  the  wife  is  sometimes  delivered  to  the  husband 
under  this  formula,  "Here  wolf,  take  thy  lamb!"  and 
the  bride-groom  is  presented  with  a  whip  by  his  bride 
giving  her  a  few  blows  as  part  of  the  ceremony,  and 
bidding  her  draw  off  his  boots  as  a  sign  of  her  sub- 
jection to  him.  With  such  an  entrance  ceremony  it 
may  well  be  surmised  that  the  marriage  relation  per- 
mits the  most  revolting  tyranny.  And  this  condition 
can  be  directly  traced  to  the  period  since  Christianity 
was  adopted  under  Vladimir,  a  thousand  years  since, 
as  the  religion  of  that  nation.  The  old  Slavs  recog- 
nized the  equality  of  woman  in  household,  political, 
and  religious  matters,  and  not  until  Byzantine  Chris- 
tianity became  incorporated  with,  and  a  part  of,  the 
civil  polity  of  its  rulers,  did  Russia  present  such  a 
picture  of  domestic  degradation  as  it  shows  to-day. 
The  chastisement  of  wives  is  directly  taught  as  part 
of  the  husband's  domestic  duty.  Until  recently,  the 
wife  who  killed  her  husband  while  he  was  thus  pun- 
ishing her,  was  buried  alive,  her  head  only  being  left 
above  ground.  Many  lingered  for  days  before  death 
reached  them. 

Ivan  Panim,  a  Russian  exile,  while  a  student  at 
Harvard  College,  1881,  made  the  following  statement 
at  a  Convention  of  the  Massachusetts  Woman  Suffrage 
Society: 

A  short  time  ago  the  wife  of  a  well-to-do  peasant 
came  to  the  justice  of  one  of  the  district  courts  in 
Russia  and  demanded  protection  from  the  cruelty  of 
her  husband.  She  proved  conclusively  by  the  aid  of 
competent  witnesses  that  he  had  bound  her  naked  to 
a  stake  during  the  cold  weather  on  the  street,  and 
asked  the  passers-by  to  strike  her;  and  whenever  they 
refused  he  struck  her  himself.  He  fastened  her  more- 
over  to  the  ground,  put   many  stones  and  weights  on 


WIVES  383 

her  and  broke  one  of  her  arms.  The  court  declared 
the  husband  "not  guilty."  "It  cannot  afford,"  it  said, 
"to  teach  woman  to  disobey  the  commands  of  he**  hus- 
band." 

Mr.  Panim  declared  this  to  be  by  no  means  an  ex- 
treme or  isolated  case,  and  that  few  became  known  to 
the  public  through  the  courts  or  the  press.  While 
the  above  incident  illustrates  the  cruelty  of  the  state 
towards  woman  under  the  Greek  form  of  Christianity, 
others  with  equal  pertinence  prove  the  cruelty  of  the 
church. 

A  peasant  in  the  village  of  Zelovia  Baltic,  having 
reason  to  doubt  the  fidelity  of  his  spouse,  deliberately 
harnessed  her  to  a  cart  in  company  with  a  mare — a 
species  of  double  harness  for  which  the  lady  was 
doubtless  unprepared  when  she  took  the  nuptial  vow — 
He  then  got  into  the  cart  in  company  with  a  friend, 
and  drove  the  ill-assorted  team  some  sixteen  versts 
(nearly  eleven  English  miles,)  without  sparing  the 
whip-cord.  When  he  returned  from  his  excursion  he 
sheared  the  unlucky  woman's  head,  tarred  and  feather- 
ed her  and  turned  her  out  of  doors.  She  naturally 
sought  refuge  and  consolation  from  her  parish  priest; 
but  he  sent  her  back  to  her  lord  and  master,  prescrib- 
ing further  flagellations.  An  appeal  to  justice  by  the 
poor  woman  and  her  relatives,  resulted  in  a  non-suit, 
and  recourse  to  a  higher  court  will  probably  termi- 
nate in  the  same  manner. 

Popular  Russian  songs  allude  to  woman's  wrongs  in 
the  marriage  relation.  The  wife  of  a  son  living  with 
his  father  is  looked  upon  as  an  additional  animal  to 
be  urged  to  the  utmost  exertion.  She  is  treated 
almost  like  a  slave  and  with  less  consideration  than  a 
horse  or  cow.  Lady  Varney,111  gives  the  chorus  of  a 
song  in  the  "Lament  of  a  Young  Russian  Bride," 
which  portrays  the  father-in-law's  part. 

III.    Rural  Life  in  Russia.— The  Nineteenth  Century. 


3^4  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

CHORUS. 

"Thumping,     scolding,     never    lets    his    daughter 
sleep," 
"Up  you  slattern!  up  you  sloven  sluggish  slut!" 
The  wife  also  entreats  her  husband  for  mercy. 

"Oh   husband,  only    for   good   cause  beat   thou  thy 

wife 
Not  for  little  things." 
"Far  away   is  my  father  dear,  and   farther  still  my 

mother." 

While  demanding  marital  fidelity  from  wives,  Rus- 
sian husbands  do  not  bind  themselves  to  the  same  pu- 
rity; and  aside  from  wife-beating,  the  husband's  in- 
fidelities form  the  general  subject  of  songs.  Peter  the 
Great,  head  of  the  Greek  Church,  not  only  beat  his 
Empress  Catherine,  but  while  demanding  marital 
fidelity  from  her,  was  notorious  for  his  liaisons  with 
women  of  low  rank.112  Women  were  not  counted  in 
the  census  of  Russia  until  the  reign  of  this  monarch. 
So  many  "souls"  no  woman  named.  So  long  con- 
tinued has  been  this  treatment  of  woman,  that  the 
poet    Nekrasof  says  : 

Ages  have  rolled  away,  the  whole  face  of  the  earth 
has  brightened;  only  the  somber  lot  of  the  Mowguk's 
wife  God  forgets  to  change. 

Man's  opinion  of  woman  is  shown  in  the  proverb, 
"A  hen  is  not  a  bird,  neither  is  a  woman  a  human 
being."  Nekrasof  makes  one  of  his  village  heroines 
say:  "God  has  forgotten  the  nook  where  he  hid  the 
keys  of  woman's  emancipation,"  which  woman's  de- 
spair has  changed  to  the  proverb  "God  remembers 
everything  but  the  Slavonian  woman;  he  has  forgot- 
ten where  he  hid  the  keys  of  her  emancipation."     The 

1x2.     See  Chap.  4.  p,  161. 


WIVES  385 

system  of  indulgence  is  as  marked  in  the  Greek  as  in 
the  Catholic  Church,  but  under  slightly  different 
aspects.  The  worship  of  saints  is  an  important  part 
of  the  Byzantine  religion  There  are  two  saints,  to 
whom  if  a  person  prays  as  he  goes  out  to  commit  a 
crime,  however  heinous,  he  takes  his  pardon  with 
him.113  The  present  condition  of  Russian  affairs  is 
ascribed  by  Edmond  Noble,  to  a  long  felt  revolt  in  the 
minds  of  the  people,  against  the  social,  political  and 
religious  system  of  that  country.  While  the  peasant 
implicitly  obeys  the  czar,  regarding  his  position  as 
divine  and  all  his  commands  as  just,  there  is  an  ele- 
ment that  recalls  the  former  period  of  freedom,  with 
intensity  of  desire  for  its  re-establishment.  To  this 
class,  permeated  as  it  must  be  with  the  spirit  of  the 
age,  the  efforts  for  constitutional  change,  and  what  the 
world  knows  as  Nihilism,  are  attributable.  It  is  in 
reality  a  mighty  protest  against  that  Christianity 
which  in  destroying  politicial  freedom,  instituted 
a  monstrous  spiritual  and  material  tyranny  in  its  place. 
Nihilism  is  not  wholly  nor  even  chiefly  a  form  of  polit- 
ical change;  it  has  a  depth  and  a  power  much  be- 
yond mere  social  or  governmental  change;  it  looks  to 
an  entire  overthrow  of  that  religious  system  which 
permeates  and  underlies  all  moral  and  political  tyranny 
in  Russia. 

Class  legislation  of  extreme  character  is  still 
constantly  met  in  all  christian  lands.  The  Eng- 
lish Bill  of  1887,  for  extending  Parliamentary  Fran- 
chise to  woman,  as  shown,  having  as  its  last  clause, 
"Provided    that    nothing    in    this  Act  contained    shall 

113.  I  myself  am  the  happy  possessor  of  a  little  rude  wooden  tas-relief, 
framed  and  glazed,  of  two  saints,  whose  names  I  have  ungratefully  forgotten,  to 
whom  if  you  pray  as  you  go  out  to  commit  a  crime,  however  heinous,  you  take  your 
pardon  with  you. — Rural  Life  in  Russia. 


386  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

enable  women  under  coverture  to  be  registered  or  to 
vote  at  such  elections. "  In  this  Bill,  the  State  recognized 
the  marital  subordination  of  woman,  held  by  law  as 
under  her  husband's  control  not  possessing  freedom  of 
thought,  judgment,  or  action  upon  questions  of 
vital  importance  to  herself.  Walter  Besant  de- 
clares: 

That  it  is  only  by  searching  and  poking  among  un- 
known pamphlets  and  forgotten  books  that  one  finds 
out  the  actual  depth  of  the  English  savagery  of  the 
last  century  *  *  *  that  for  drunkenness,  brutality 
and  ignorance  the  Englishmen  of  the  baser  kind, 
reached  the  lowest  depth  ever  reached  by  civilized 
men  *  *  *  a  drunkard,  a  brawler,  a  torturer  of  dumb 
beasts,  a  wife-beater,   a  profligate." 

It  is  not  necessary   to   search  "unknown    pamphlets 
and  forgotten  books,"  in   order  to  find  out  the  depths 
of  English  or  other  christian   savagery  of   the  present 
century.     Every   newspaper   report,  every  court    deci- 
sion, every    Act  of   Parliament   or  Legislature,   every 
decree  of  king,  or  czar,  or  other  potentate  ;  every  canon, 
decree  or  decision  of  the   church,  proclaims  the  ignor- 
ance, brutality  and   savagery  of  Christendom.     Nor  is 
it  among  men  of  the    baser  kind  with  their    infliction 
of  corporal  punishment  upon  wives,  but  in  the  subtler 
and  more  refined  methods   of    torture  made   use  of  by 
men  of  the  highest  position,  that  we  most  truly  find  out 
the  depths  of  the  savagery  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Profligacy  among  men  of    the   highest   position  never 
flourished  more  luxuriantly   than   at  the  present  time; 
drunkenness  has  by  no  means  passed  away;  wife-beat- 
ing is  still  a  common    amusement;    the  law    still  fails 
to  extend  a  protecting  arm  around  those  most  needing 
its   defence;  the  church  yet  fails  to    recognize  a  com- 
mon  humanity   in  all  classes  of    people.     Old    tradi- 


WIVES  387 

tional  customs  of  thought  and  action  still  prevail,  and 
the  men  of  a  hundred  years  hence  will  look  upon  the 
present  time  with  the  same  criticising  astonishment 
that  the  historian  of  to-day  looks  upon  the  last  cen- 
tury. Savagery  instead  of  civilization  is  still  the  pre- 
dominant power  in  Christendom.  In  comparison  with 
the  treatment  many  wives  receive  in  christian  lands, 
that  of  women  among  the  American  Indians,  or  the 
most  savage  races  of  the  old  world,  is  far  more 
humane  than  shown  in  England,  America  and  other 
christian  lands,  where  even  maternity  does  not  free 
woman  from  the  coarsest  brutality  upon  the  part  of 
husbands,  nor  the  illness  incident  upon  bringing  a 
new  being  into  the  world,  from  writs  of  "contempt," 
even  though  the  death  of  mother  or  babe  result.  In 
1890,  the  Press  of  New  York  City  reported  the  case 
of  Mrs.  R.  Bassman,  who  was  summoned  to  appear 
before  the  Surrogate  Court,  for  a  funeral  debt.  Being 
in  confinement  she  was  unable  to  appear.  Thereupon 
an  order  for  her  arrest  for  Contempt  of  Court  was 
issued,  and  while  still  unrecovered  from  her  illness, 
she  was  arrested  and  incarcerated  in  Ludlow  Street 
jail.  Her  newly  born  babe  deprived  of  its  mother's 
care  sickened  and  died;  and  this  is  part  of  Christian 
civilization  for  woman,  in  nearly  the  two  thousandth 
year  of  its  existence. 

Booth's  "Darkest  England"  m  relates  a  somewhat 
parallel  case,  parallel  in  so  far  as  it  shows  the  en- 
slaved condition  of  the  English  wife  under  present 
christian  laws. 

A  woman  who  lived  just  opposite  had  been  cruelly 
kicked  and  cursed  by  her  husband,  who  had  finally 
bolted  the   door   against  her,    and    she  had  turned    to 

114.    See  Chap.  4.  p.  189. 


388  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Barbie,  as  the  only  hope,  Barbie  took  her  in  with 
her  rough  and  ready  kindness,  got  her  to  bed  and 
was  both  nurse  and  doctor  for  the  poor  woman  till 
her  child  was  born  and  laid  in  the  mother's  arms.  Not 
daring  to  be  absent  longer  she  got  up  as  best  she 
could  and  crawled  on  hands  and  knees  down  the 
little  steep  steps,  across  the  street,  and  back  to  her 
own  door;  *  *  it  might  have  cost  the  woman  her 
life  to  be  absent  from  her  home  more  than  a  couple 
of  hours. 

That  brutal  men  exist  everywhere,  that  women  and 
children  are  in  all  lands  abused,  that  prize-fighting 
with  its  concomitants  of  broken  jaws,  noses,  heads, 
takes  place  in  christian  lands,  are  undeniable  facts, 
usually  although  in  defiance  of  law  and  subjecting 
their  perpetrators  to  punishment.  But  the  peculiarity 
of  the  cases  noted  and  of  ten  thousand  others,  is  that 
they  are  done  under  the  authority  of  the  law,  to  a  be- 
ing whom  the  law  seems  not  bound  to  protect.  No 
husbands  in  the  world  are  more  brutal  than  lower- 
class  Englishmen  into  whose  hands  the  wife  is  given 
by  law,  and  he  protected  by  the  law  in  his  ill-usage 
of  her.  It  is  Christian  law  of  which  complaint  is 
made;  it  is  the  effect  of  Christian  civilization,  in  its 
treatment  of  woman,  to  which  attention  is  called. 
"Darkest  England"  furnishes  still  fuller  statements 
of  woman's  degraded  condition  in  that  country.  In 
the  opening  pages  of  that  work  it  is  said: 

Hard  it  is,  no  doubt,  to  read  in  Stanley's  pages  of 
the  slave-traders  coldly  arranging  for  the  surprise  of 
a  village,  the  capture  of  the  inhabitants,  the  massacre 
of  those  who  resist,  and  the  violation  of  all  the  wo- 
men ;  but  the  stony  streets  of  London,  if  they  could 
but  speak,  would  tell  of  tragedies  as  awful,  of  ruin  as 
complete,  of  ravishments  as  horrible,  as  if  we  were  in 
Central  Africa;    only  the  ghostly    devastation  is    cov- 


WIVES  389 

ered,  corpse-like,  with  the  artificialities  of  modern  civ- 
ilization. 

The  lot  of  a  negress  in  the  Equatorial  Forest  is 
not,  perhaps,  a  very  happy  one  but  is  it  so  much  worse 
than  that  of  many  a  pretty  orphan  girl's  in  our  chris- 
tian capital?  We  talk  about  the  brutalities  of  the  dark 
ages  and  we  profess  to  shudder  as  we  read  in  the  books 
of  the  shameful  exactions  of  the  rights  of  feudal  su- 
periors. And  yet  here,  beneath  our  very  eyes,  in  our 
theaters,  in  our  restaurants,  and  in  many  other  places 
unspeakable,  it  be  enough  but  to  name  it,  the  same 
hideous  abuse  flourishes  unchecked.  A  young  penni- 
less girl,  if  she  be  pretty,  is  often  hunted  from  pillar 
to  post  by  her  employers,  confronted  always  by  the 
alternative— starve  or  sin.  Darkest  England,  like 
Darkest  Africa,  reeks  with  malaria. 

It  should  be  impressed  upon  the  mind  that  the 
difference  between  "Darkest  Africa,"  and  "Darkest 
England,"  lies  in  the  two  facts,  that  one  is  the  dark- 
ness of  ignorant  and  savage  races  who  are  in  the  very 
night  of  barbarism;  while  the  other  is  the  moral  dark- 
ness of  christian  civilization,  in  the  very  center  of 
Christendom,  after  2,000  years  of  church  teaching  and 
priestly  influence.  A  few  years  since,  in  Massa- 
chusetts, an  action  for  cruelty  on  part  of  a  husband 
came  before  a  court,  the  charge  being  that  he  came 
home  one  night  in  February,  when  the  thermometer 
was  ten  degrees  below  zero,  and  turned  his  wife  and 
little  child,  with  his  wife's  mother  of  eighty,  out  of 
the  house.115  While  the  wife  was  giving  testimony, 
the  judge  interrupted,   saying : 

"The  husband  had  a  right  to  do  so,  there  was  a 
quarrel  between  the  husband  and  wife,  and  he  had  a 
legal  right  to  turn  her  out  and  take  possession  of  the 
house,  that  was  not  cruelty." 

From  the  newspapers  of   April,  1886,  we  learn  that: 

115.    Reported  by  Mrs.  Livertnore. 


39°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

At  Salem,  W.  Va.,  Thomas  True  drove  his  wife  out 
of  doors  and  swore  he  would  kill  any  one  who  would 
give  her  shelter.  Robert  Miller  took  her  into  his 
house,  and  was  killed  by  True. 

The  system  of  marriage  recognized  by  the  church 
has  ever  been  that  of  ownership  and  power  by  the  hus- 
band and  father,  over  the  wife  and  children,  and  dur- 
ing the  Middle  Ages  the  ban  of  the  church  fell  with 
equal  force  upon  the  woman,  who  for  any  cause  left 
her  husband,  as  upon  the  witch.  The  two  were  under 
the  same  ban  as  the  excommunicated,  denounced  as 
one  whom  all  others  must  shun,  whom  no  one  must 
succor  or  harbor,  and  with  whom  it  was  unlawful  to 
hold  any  species  of  intercourse. 

The  "boycott"  is  not  an  invention  of  the  present 
century,  but  was  in  use  many  hundred  years  since 
against  a  recalcitrant  wife,  under  sanction  of  both 
church  and  state.  The  advertisements  of  absconding 
wives  seen  at  the  present  day,  whom  the  husband  sets 
forth  as  having  left  his  bed  and  board  and  whom  all 
persons  are  thereafter  forbidden  to  trust  upon  his  ac- 
count, are  but  a  reminiscence  of  the  wife-boycott  of 
former  }'ears,  when  all  persons,  were  forbidden  to  "har- 
bor her"  under  penalty,  unless  it  could  be  proven  that 
her  life  was  in  danger  without  such  aid.  The  husband 
was  held  to  possess  vested  rights  in  the  wife,  not  only 
as  against  herself,  but  as  against  the  world,  and  it  is 
not  half  a  decade  since  the  notice  below,  appeared 
in  a  Kansas  paper,118  accompanied  by  the  cut  of  a 
fleeing  woman. 

A    $50  CAPTURE. 

A  woman  who  ran  away  from  her  husband   at  Law- 
rence some  time  ago,  was  found  at  Fort  Leavenworth 

116.    Leavenworth  Standard,  Dec.  SI,  1886. 


WIVES  391 

yesterday  by  a  Lawrence  detective  and  taken  back  to 
her  home.  The  officer  received  a  reward  of  $50  for 
her  capture. — "Leavenworth  Standard,"  Kas.,  Dec.  21, 
1886. 

This  advertisement  and  others  of  a  similar  character 
to  be  seen  in  the  daily  and  weekly  press  of  the  coun- 
try, are  undeniable  proofs  of  the  low  condition  under 
the  law,  of  woman  in  the  marriage  relation,  and  read 
very  much  like  the  notices  in  regard  to  absconding 
slaves  a  few  years  since.  Kansas  was  one  of  the  very 
first  states  which  recognized  the  right  of  a  married 
mother  to  her  own  child,  that  provision  having  been 
incorporated  in  its  constitution  at  early  date  as  an 
enticement  for  bringing  women  emigrants  into  that 
state,  at  a  period  when  the  anti-slavery  and  pro-slavery 
contests  within  its  borders  had  made  it  bloody  ground. 
Although  the  married  woman's  property  law  and  the 
spirit  of  free  thought  has  rendered  such  action  less 
frequent  than  formerly,  it  is  less  than  forty  years,  as 
before  noted,  since  the  New  York  Court  of  Common 
Pleas  rendered  a  judgment  of  $10,000  in  favor  of  a 
husband  against  the  relatives  of  his  wife,  who  at  her 
own  request  "harbored  and  sheltered"  her.  The  Chris- 
tian principle  of  man's  ownership  of  woman,  for  many 
hundred  years  under  English  law,  rendered  the  party 
giving  shelter  to  a  fleeing  wife  liable  to  the  husband 
in  money  damages,  upon  the  ground  of  having  aided 
a  runaway  servant  to  the  master's  injury.  Under  but 
one  circumstance  was  such  shelter  admissible.  In 
case  the  wife  was  in  danger  of  perishing,  she  could  be 
harbored  until  morning,  when  she  must  be  returned  to 
her  master  by  the  person  who  had  thus  temporarily 
taken  care  of  his  perishable  property.  In  England  as 
late  as  1876,  the  case  of  a  Mrs.  Cochrane,  who  had 
lived  apart  from  her  husband  for  years,  and  showing  an- 


392  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

other  phase  of  property  law  in  the  wife,  came  up  be- 
fore Judge  Coleridge.  Her  character  was  not  at  all 
impeached,  but  she  indulged  in  amusements  which  her 
husband  considered  reprehensible,  and  through  strata- 
gem she  was  brought  to  his  lodgings  and  there  kept  a 
prisoner.  A  writ  of  habeas  corpus  being  sued  out,  the 
husband  was  compelled  to  bring  her  before  the  court 
of  the  Queen's  Bench.  The  decision  of  the  judge  ren- 
dered in  favor  of  the  husband's  right  of  forcible  de- 
tention, was  declared  by  him  to  be  upon  ground  that 
English  law  virtually  considered  the  wife  as  being  un- 
der the  guardianship  of  the  husband,  not  a  person  in 
her  own  right,  and  this  distinctly  upon  the  ground  of 
her  perpetual  infancy;117  she  must  be  restored  to  her 
husband.  As  late  at  1886,  the  "Personal  Rights 
Journal  "  of  England  called  attention  to  the  suit  of  a 
clergyman  for  the  "restitution  of  conjugal  rights"  and 
custody  of  child.  The  wife  not  being  able  to  live  in 
agreement  with  the  husband,  had  taken  her  child  and 
left  him.  A  decree  for  such  restitution  having  been 
pronounced  by  court,  the  husband,  Rev.  Joseph  Wallis, 
advertised  for  his  absconding  wife,  Caroline  Wallis, 
offering  one  hundred  pounds  reward  for  such  informa- 
tion as  should  lead  to  her  discovery 

;£lOO   REWARD. 

Whereas,  A  Decree  was  pronounced  in  the  Probate, 
Divorce,  and  Admiralty  Division  of  the  High  Court 
of  Justice,  on  the  5th  day  of  June>  1886,  in  the  suit 
of  Samuel  Joseph  Wallis  versus  Caroline  Wallis,  for 
restitution  of  conjugal  rights,  and  for  custody  of  the 
child,  May  Wallis,  to  the  petitioner,  the  said  Samuel 
Joseph  Wallis.  And  Whereas  it  has  been  ascertained 
that  the  said  Caroline  Wallis  has  lately  been  seen  at 
Whitstable  and  the  Neighborhood, 

117.  Under  common  law  a  woman  is  classified  with  lunatics,  idiots,  infants 
and  minors. 


wives  393 

Notice  is  Hereby  Given, 

That  the  above  Reward  will  be  paid  to  any  Person 
or  Persons  who  shall  give  such  information  as  will 
lead  to  the  discovery  of  the  whereabouts  of  the  said 
Caroline  Wallis,  and  the  recovery  by  the  said  S.  J. 
Wallis  of  the  custody  of  the  said  Child. 

Information  to  be  sent  to  me,  Richard  Howe  Bright- 
man,  of  Sheerness,  Kent,  Solicitor  to  the  said  Samuel 
Joseph  Wallis. 

This  brutal  advertisement  in  the  dying  hours  of  the 
nineteenth  century  had  the  effect  of  rousing  public  at- 
tention to  woman's  enslaved  condition  in  the  marital 
relation,  and  a  rapid  growth  of  public  sentiment  in 
recognition  of  a  wife's  individual  and  distinct  per- 
sonality, took  place  between  1886  and  1890,  a  period 
of  four  years.  During  the  latter  year  another  English 
husband,  one  Jackson,  forcibly  abducted  his  wife  who 
lived  apart  from  him,  holding  her  prisoner  with  gun 
and  bayonet,  threatening  her  friends  with  death — as 
was  his  legal  right — in  case  of  her  attemped  rescue. 
When  this  was  known,  hundreds  of  letters  poured 
into  the  press,  upholding  the  right  of  a  wife  to  the 
control  of  her  own  person,  and  writ  of  habeas  corpus 
compelled  her  production  in  court.  Under  the  pres- 
sure of  a  public  sentiment  he  found  it  wise  to  concil- 
iate, the  judge  decided  in  favor  of  her  right  to  live 
away  from  her  husband,  who  was  also  restrained  from 
farther  molesting  her.  The  Supreme  Court  of  Georgia 
recently  rendered  a  decision  in  regard  to  the  rights  of 
husbands  as  related  to  the  wife's  rights  of  property, 
in  which  the  church  theory  of  her  subordination  was 
maintained. 

"The  wife  has  been  much  advanced  by  the  general 
tenor  of  legislation  of  late  years  in  respect  to  her 
property.     She  has  acquired  a  pretty  independent  po- 


394  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

sition  as  to  title,  control  and  disposition,  but  this 
relates  to  her  own  property,  not  to  his.  The  law  has 
not  yet  raised  her  to  the  station  of  superintendent  of 
her  husband's  contracts  and  probably  never  will.  In 
taking  a  wife  a  man  does  not  put  himself  under  an 
overseer.  He  is  not  a  subordinate  in  his  own  family 
but  the  head  of  it.  A  subjugated  husband  is  a  less 
energetic  member  of  society  than  one  who  keeps  his 
true  place,  yet  knows  how  to  temper  authority  with 
affection.,, 

During  the  famous  Beecher  trial,  Hon.  Wm.  M. 
Evarts  denned  woman's  legal  position  as  one  of  sub- 
ordination to  man,  declaring  "that  notwithstanding 
changing  customs  and  the  amenities  of  modern  life, 
women  were  not  free,  but  were  held  in  the  hollow  of 
man's  hand,  to  be  crushed  at  his  will."  In  exempli- 
fication of  this  statement  he  referred  to  a  recent  de- 
cision of  the  New  York  Court  of  Appeals,  and  to  the 
highest  tribunals  of  England.  He  gave  his  own  sanc- 
tion to  these  principles  of  law,  all  of  which  owe  their 
foundation  to  church  teaching  regarding  woman,  en- 
forced by  the  peculiar  forms  of  marriage  ceremony 
it  has  instituted. 

The  church  everywhere  strenuously  opposes  civil 
marriage.  The  Plenary  Council  of  1884,  and  the  cele- 
bration of  the  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  Catholic 
hierarchy  in  the  United  States,  each  making  church 
marriage  a  prominent  part  of  their  discussions. 
Different  parts  of  Europe  and  of  South  America  have 
recently  been  shaken  by  church  action  in  regard  to  it. 
Prussia,  Belgium,  Italy,  France,  have  fallen  under 
the  odium  of  the  church  in  consequence  of  the  civil 
laws  declaring  marriage  valid  without  the  aid  of  the 
church.  The  celebrated  M.  Godin  founder  of  the  co- 
operative Familistere,  at  Guise,  was  married  in  1886 
under  civil    form,  to    a  lady    member    of  the    French 


wives  395 

League  for  the  Rights  of  Women,  and  thus  announced 
the  marriage  to  their  friends: 

M.  Godin,  manufacturer,  founder  of  Familistere, 
and  Madame  Marie  Godin,  nee  Moret,  his  secretary 
and  co-laborer  in  the  work  of  the  Familistere,  and  in 
the  propagation  of  social  reform,  have  the  honor  of 
announcing  to  you  the  purely  civil  marriage  which 
they  contracted  at  Guise,  the  14th  day  of  July,  1886, 
that  they  might  manifest  to  all  their  union,  and  the 
common  purpose  of  all  the  efforts  of  their  lives. 

Civil  marriage,  where  the  church  is  supreme,  is 
followed  by  excommunication  and  odious  insults.  In 
1885  a  remarkable  instance  of  this  kind  occurred  in 
the  city  of  Concepcion,  Chili.  A  young  couple  were 
married,  with  consent  of  their  parents,  according  to 
the  civil  law.  Their  social  and  political  prominence 
made  the  occasion  conspicuous,  as  it  was  the  first  wed- 
ding among  the  aristocracy  in  that  country,  dispensing 
with  the  aid  of  a  priest.  The  church  paper  edited 
by  a  Jesuit  priest  thus  commented: 

The  "Libertad"  calls  this  "a  happy  union,"  but 
it  should  remember  that  "happy  unions"  of  this  sort 
have  hitherto  existed  only  in  the  animal  kingdom. 

The  bride,  groom,  and  all  their  families  suffered  ex- 
communication from  the  church.  But  it  is  not  alone 
the  Catholic  church  which  desires  to  retain  its  hold 
upon  marriage.  Less  than  two  years  since  certain 
clergymen  of  the  Anglican  church  agreed  to  officiate 
at  marriages  without  a  fee,  for  the  purpose  of  retain- 
ing control  of  this  relation;  and  so  strong  has  been 
the  influence  of  the  church  during  the  ages,  that  few 
people  look  upon  a  ceremony  under  the  civil  law  with 
the  same  respect  as  one  performed  by  a  priest,  even 
of  a  Protestant  denomination.  The  control  of  mar- 
riage by  the  church  while  throwing  wealth  into  its 
own  coffers,  has    ever  had    a    prejudicial    effect    upon 


39*5  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

morals,  as  impediments  to  marriage  of  whatever  char- 
acter increase  immorality.  In  the  city  of  Concep- 
cion  referred  to,  of  200,000  inhabitants,  there  are  two 
thousand  children  of  unknown  parentage.  In  1884, 
statistics  showed  sixty-two  per  cent,  of  the  children  to 
be  illegitimate.  The  parents  of  those  little  ones  were 
mostly  known,  being  persons  too  poor  to  pay  the  cost 
of  a  church  marriage,  twenty-five  dollars,  its  price,  be- 
ing quite  beyond  the  means  of  the  humbler  classes. 
The  Liberal  party,  in  establishing  civil  marriage  as 
legitimate,  authorized  any  magistrate  to  perform  the 
ceremony,  and  furnish  a  certificate  for  twenty-five 
cents.  This  assault  upon  the  ancient  prerogative  of 
the  church  depriving  priests  of  the  largest  source  of 
their  revenue,  at  once  made  a  religious-political  issue 
of  the  question,  the  church  taking  strenuous  action 
against  all  connected  with  framing  the  law,  and  its 
repeal  became  the  prominent  political  issue,  to  aid 
which  all  the  faithful  were  called.  Using  its  old 
weapons,  the  church  through  the  Archbishop  issued 
an  edict  excommunicating  the  president  of  the  re- 
public, the  members  of  his  cabinet  and  the  members 
of  congress  who  voted  for  the  statute;  directing  that 
a  similar  penalty  should  fall  upon  every  communicant 
who  obeyed  it  and  neglected  to  recognize  the  church 
as  the  only  authority  competent  to  solemnize  the 
marriage  rite. 

A  correspondent  of  the  "New  York  Sun,"  in  Chili, 
wrote: 

This  brought  matters  to  a  crisis.  On  the  one  hand, 
the  State  declared  all  marriages  not  under  the  civil 
law  illegal,  and  their  issue  illegitimate,  refusing  to 
recognize  rites  performed  by  the  priests.  On  the 
other,  those  who  obey  the  law  are  excommunicated 
from  the  church,  and  their  cohabitation    forbidden  by 


wivbs  397 

the  highest  ecclesiastical  authority.  Thus  matrimony 
is  practically  forbidden,  and  those  who  choose  to  enter 
it  have  their  choice  between  arrest  and  excommunica- 
tion. A  young  member  of  Congress,  a  man  of  gifts 
and  influence,  who  stands  as  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
Liberal  party,  and  who  voted  and  argued  for  civil 
marriage,  is  engaged  to  the  daughter  of  a  wealthy 
merchant  with  proud  lineage  and  aristocratic  connec- 
tions. He  is  willing  to  accept  the  civil  authority, 
which  he  helped  to  create,  and  she  and  her  father  are 
also  willing,  but  her  mother  is  a  devout  church  woman 
and  cannot  regard  marriage  as  sacred  without  the 
blessing  of  a  priest.  She  favors  the  alliance,  but  in- 
sists that  the  Church  shall  be  recognized.  The  bishop 
declines  to  permit  the  ceremony  unless  the  young  man 
shall  go  to  the  confessional  and  retract  his  political 
record,  with  a  vow  to  hereafter  remain  steadfast  to 
the  church.  This  he  refuses  to  do.  The  couple  will 
go  to  Europe  or  the  States  and  there  have  the  cere- 
mony performed. 

This  action  of  the  Chilian  republic  in  substituting 
a  civil  for  a  religious  ceremony  in  marriage  and  de- 
claring the  latter  to  be  illegal,  is  a  most  important 
step  in  civilization,  of  which  freedom  for  woman  is 
such  an  essential  factor;  and  its  results  in  that  country 
must  be  felt  in  woman's  every  relation  of  life,  promot- 
ing self-respect,  self-reliance  and  security  in  place  of 
the  degradation,  self-distrust  and  fear  to  which  its 
church  has  so  long  condemned  her. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

POLYGAMY. 

It  is  of  indisputed  historic  record  that  both  the 
Christian  Church  and  the  Christian  State  in  different 
centuries  and  under  a  number  of  differing  circumstances 
gave  their  influence  in  favor  of  polygamy.  The  Roman 
emperor,  Valentinian  I.,  in  the  fourth  century,  author- 
ized christians  to  take  two  wives;  in  the  eighth  cen- 
tury the  great  Charlemagne  holding  power  over  both 
church  and  state,  in  his  own  person  practiced  polyg- 
amy, having  six,  or  according  to  some  authorities, 
nine  wives.  With  the  Reformation  this  system  entered 
Protestantism.  As  the  first  synod  in  North  America 
was  called  for  the  purpose  of  trying  a  woman  for  her- 
esy, so  the  first  synod  of  the  reformation  was  assembled 
for  the  purpose  of  sustaining  polygamy,  thus  farther 
debasing  woman  in  the  marital  relation.  The  great 
German  reformer,  Luther,  although  perhaps  himself 
free  from  the  lasciviousness  of  the  old  priesthood  was 
not  strictly  monogamic  in  principle.  When  applied 
to  by  Philip,  Landgrave  of  Hesse  Cassel,  for  permis- 
sion to  rnarry  a  second  wife  while  his  first  wife,  Mar- 
garet of  Savoy,  was  still  living,  he  called  together  a 
synod  of  six  of  the  principal  reformers — Melancthon 
and  Bucer  among  them — who  in  joint  consultation 
decided  "that  as  the  Bible  nowhere  condemns  polyg- 
amy,and  as  it  has  been  invariably  practiced  by  the 
highest  dignitaries  of  the  church,"  such  marriage  was 


POLYGAMY  399 

legitimate,  and  the  required  permission  was  given. 
Luther  himself  with  both  the  Old  and  the  New  Testa- 
ments in  hand,  saying,  "I  confess  for  my  part  that  if 
a  man  wishes  to  marry  two  or  more  wives,  I  cannot 
forbid  him,  nor  is  his  conduct  repugnant  to  the  Holy 
Scriptures."  Thus  we  have  the  degrading  proof  that 
the  doctrine  of  polygamy  was  brought  into  reformation 
by  its  earliest  promoters  under  assertion  that  it  was 
not  inconsistent  with  the  Bible  or  the  principles  of  the 
Gospel.  The  whole  course  of  Luther  during  the  ref- 
ormation proved  his  disbelief  in  the  equality  of  woman 
with  man;  when  he  left  the  Catholic  church  he  took 
with  him  the  old  theory  of  her  created  subordination. 
It  was  his  maxim  that  "No  gown  or  garment  worse 
becomes  a  woman  than  that  she  will  be  wise,"  thus 
giving  the  weight  of  his  influence  against  woman's  in- 
tellectual freedom  and  independent  thought.  Although 
he  opposed  monastic  life,  the  home  for  woman  under 
the  reformation  was  governed  by  many  of  its  rules. 

First:  She  was  to  be  under  obedience  to  man  as 
head  of  the  house. 

Second:  She  was  to  be  constantly  employed  for  his 
benefit. 

Third:  Her  society  was  strictly  chosen  for  her  by 
this  master  and  head. 

Fourth:  This  "head"  was  a  general-father  confessor, 
to  whom  she  was  held  accountable  in  word  and  deed. 

Fifth:  Neither  genius  nor  talent  could  free  her  from 
his  control  without  his  consent. 

Luther's  views  regarding  polygamy  have  been  en- 
dorsed and  sanctioned  since  that  period  by  men  emi- 
nent in  church  and  state.  Lord  Seldon  known  as  "The 
Light  of  England"  in  the  seventeenth  century,  pub- 
lished a  work  under  title  of  "Uxor  Haebraica"  for  the 


4<X>  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

purpose  of  proving  that  polygamy  was  permitted  to 
the  Hebrews.  His  arguments  were  accepted  by  the 
church  as  indisputable.  Bishop  Burnet,  who  while 
holding  the  great  Protestant  Episcopal  See  of  Salisbury, 
so  successfully  opposed  the  plan  inaugurated  by  Queen 
Anne  for  the  esablishment  of  a  woman's  college  in 
England,  added  to  his  infamy  by  writing  a  tract  en- 
titled "Is  a  Plurality  of  Wives  in  any  case  Lawful 
under  the  Gospel?"  This  question  he  answered  in  the 
affirmative  sustaining  the  rightfulness  of  polygamy 
under  the  Christian  dispensation.  Quoting  the  words 
of  Christ  upon  divorce,  he  said: 

We  must  not  by  a  consequence  condemn  a  plurality 
of  wives  since  it  seems  not  to  have  fallen  within  the 
scope  of  what  our  Lord  does  there  disapprove.  There- 
fore I  see  nothing  so  strong  against  a  plurality  of  wives 
as  to  balance  the  great  and  visible  imminent  hazards 
that  hang  over  so  many  thousands  if  it  be  not  allowed. 

The  famous  Puritan  Poet  of  England,  John  Milton, 
known  in  the  University  as  "The  Lady  of  Christ  Col- 
lege," writing  upon  "The  Special  Government  of  Man," 
says: 

I  have  not  said  the  marriage  of  one  man  with  one 
woman  lest  I  should  by  implication  charge  the  holy 
patriarchs  and  pillars  of  our  faith,  Abraham  and  others 
who  had  more  than  one  wife,  at  the  same  time,  with 
habitual  sin  ;  and  lest  I  should  be  forced  to  exclude 
from  the  sanctuary  of  God  as  spurious,  ,the  whole 
offspring  which  sprang  from  them,  yea,  the  whole  of 
the  sons  of  Israel,  for  whom  the  sanctuary  itself  was 
made.  For  it  is  said  in  Deuteronomy  (xxii.  2,)  "A 
bastard  shall  not  enter  into  the  congregation  of  Jeho- 
vah even  to  the  tenth  generation."  Either,  therefore 
polygamy  is  a  true  marriage,  or  all  children  born  in 
that  state  are  spurious,  which  would  include  the  whole 
race  of  Jacob,  the  twelve  tribes  chosen  by  God.  But 
as  such  an  assertion  would    be  absurd  in  the  extreme, 


POLYGAMY  4OI 

not  to  say  impious,  and  as  it  is  the  height  of  injustice 
as  well  as  an  example  of  the  most  dangerous  tendency 
in  religion,  to  account  as  sins  what  is  not  such  in 
reality  it  appears  to  me  that  so  far  from  the  question 
respecting  the  lawfulness  of  polgyamy  being  trivial, 
it  is  of  the  highest  importance  that  it  should  be  de- 
cided. Not  a  trace  appears  of  the  interdiction  of  po- 
lygamy throughout  the  whole  law,  not  even  in  any  of 
the  prophets. 

The  Paradise  Lost  of  Milton  is  responsible  among 
English  speaking  people  for  many  existing  views  that  are 
inimical  to  woman,  and  while  his  essays  upon  liberty 
have  been  of  general  beneficial  influence  upon  the 
world,  his  particular  teachings  in  regard  to  woman  have 
seriously  injured  civilization.  This  man  of  polygamous 
beliefs,  this  tyrant  over  his  own  household  who  could 
not  gain  the  love  of  either  wives — of  whom  he  had 
three — or  of  daughters,  did  much  to  popularize  the 
idea  of  woman's  subordination  to  man.  "He  for  God; 
she  for  God  in  him"  as  expressed  by  the  lips  of  Eve 
and  so  often  quoted  as  proclaiming  the  true  relationship 
between  husband  and  wife  in  the  line,  "God  thy  law; 
thou  mine."  While  the  record  of  Milton's  life  shows 
him  to  have  been  an  intolerable  domestic  tyrant,  yet 
for  the  wife  who  could  not  live  with  him,  the  daugh- 
ters whom  social  conditions  and  lack  of  education  de- 
prived of  the  necessary  means  for  their  support,  thus 
compelling  them  to  remain  his  victims  looking  for- 
ward to  his  death  as  their  only  means  of  release, 
the  world  has  as  yet  exhibited  but  little  sympathy. 
His  genius,  undisputed  as  its  record  must  be  in  many 
directions,  has  made  his  views  of  overpowering  influ- 
ence upon  the  world  since  his  day.  But  above  all, 
more  than  all  that  created  and  sustained  this  influ- 
ence were  his  views    as  to  the    polygamous    rights  of 


402  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

man,  his  depictment  of  Eve  as  looking  upward  to 
Adam  as  her  God,  and  his  general  maintenance  of 
the  teaching  of  the  church  in  regard  to  woman.  Al- 
though it  has  been  affirmed  that  after  his  blindness  he 
dictated  his  great  epic  to  his  daughter  and  a  Scotch 
artist  has  painted  a  scene  (a  picture  owned  by  the 
Lenox  Library),  yet  this  is  one  of  the  myths  men 
call  history  and  amuse  themselves  in  believing.  Vol- 
taire declared  history  to  be  only  a  parcel  of  tricks  we 
play  with  the  dead;  and  this  tale  of  blind  Milton  dic- 
tating Paradise  Lost  to  his  daughters  is  a  trick  de- 
signed to  play  upon  our  sympathies.  Old  Dr.  John- 
son is  authority  for  the  statement  that  Milton  would 
not  allow  his  daughters  to  learn  to  write  and  it  is 
quite  certain  that  he  did  not  permit  them  a  knowledge 
of  any  language  except  the  English,  saying  "one  tongue 
is  enough  for  a  woman."  Between  Milton  and  his 
family  it  is  known  there  was  tyranny  upon  one  side, 
hatred  upon  the   other.1 

The  number  of  eminent  Protestants  both  lay  and 
clerical  who  have    sanctioned   polygamy  has    not  been 

x.  Milton's  oriental  views  of  the  function  of  women  led  him  not  only  to 
neglect  but  to  prevent  the  education  of  his  daughters.  They  were  sent  to  no 
school  at  all,  but  were  handed  over  to  a  school  mistress  in  the  house.  He  would 
not  allow  them  to  learn  any  language,  saying  with  a  sneer  that  "  for  a  woman  one 
tongue  is  enough."  The  miseries  however  that  follow  the  selfish  sacrifice  of 
others  is  so  sure  to  strike,  that  there  needs  no  future  world  of  punishment  to 
adjust  the  balance.  The  time  came  when  Milton  would  have  given  worlds 
that  his  daughters  had  learned  the  tongues.  He  was  blind  and  could  only  get  at 
his  precious  book— could  only  give  expression  to  his  precious  verses  through  the 
eyes  and  hands  of  others.  Whose  hands  and  whose  eyes  so  proper  for  this  as 
his  daughters?  He  proceeded  to  train  them  to  read  to  him,  parrot-like,  in  five  or 
six  languages  which  he  (the  schoolmaster)  could  at  one  time  have  easily  taught 
them;  but  of  which  they  now  could  not  understand  a  word.  He  turned  his 
daughters  into  reading  machines.  It  is  appalling  to  think  of  such  a  task.  That 
Mary  should  revolt  and  at  last  after  repeated  contests  with  her  taskmaster,  learn 
to  hate  her  father— that  she  should,  when  some  one  spoke  in  her  presence  of  her 
father's  approaching  marriage,  make  the  dreadful  speech  that  it  was  no  news  to 
hear  of  his  wedding,  but  if  she  could  hear  of  his  death,  that  was  something — is 
unutterably  painful,  but  not  surprising.— TA*  Athenaeum. 


POLYGAMY  403 

small.  In  the  sixteenth  century  a  former  Capuchin 
monk,  a  general  of  that  order  who  had  been  converted 
to  the  Protestant  faith,  published  a  work  entitled 
"Dialogues  in  favor  of  Polygamy."  In  the  latter  part 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  John  Lyser,  another  divine 
of  the  reformed  church  strongly  defended  it  in  a  work 
entitled  "Polygamia  Triumphatrix"  or  the  triumphant 
defense  of  polygamy.  Rev.  Dr.  Madden,  still  another 
Protestant  divine,  in  a  treatise  called  "Thalypthora," 
maintained  that  Paul's  injunction  that  bishops  should 
be  the  husbands  of  one  wife,  signified  that  laymen 
were  permitted  to  marry  more  than  one.  The  schol- 
arly William  Ellery  Channing  could  find  no  prohibi- 
tion of  polygamy  in  the  New  Testament.  In  his  "Re- 
marks on  the  Character  and  Writings  of  John  Milton"  he 
says,  "We  believe  it  to  be  an  indisputable  fact  that 
although  Christianity  was  first  preached  in  Asia  which 
had  been  from  the  earliest  days  the  seat  of  polygamy, 
the  apostles  never  denounced  it  as  a  crime  and  never 
required  their  converts  to  put  away  all  wives  but 
one.  No  express  prohibition  of  polygamy  is  found  in 
the  New  Testament."  That  eminent  American  divine, 
Henry  Ward  Beecher,  the  influence  ol  whose  opinions 
over  all  classes  was  for  many  years  so  great  as  to  con- 
stitute him  a  veritable  Protestant  pope  in  the  United 
States,  a  few  years  before  his  death  was  selected  to 
reply  at  a  New  England  dinner  to  a  toast  upon  the 
Mormon  question,  the  subject  of  polygamy  then  being 
under  discussion  by  Congress.  He  not  only  deprecated 
the  use  of  force  in  its  suppression,  but  quoted  Milton 
in  seeming  approval.  We  can  therefore  consistently 
rank  Mr.  Beecher  as  among  the  number  of  Protestant 
divines  who  believed  there  was  scriptural  warrant  for 
this  degradation  of  woman. 


404  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

But  it  is  not  alone  to  the  action  of  Christian  mon- 
archy or  the  opinion  of  jurists  and  ministers  that  we 
must  solely  look,  but  also  to  the  action  of  the  church 
as  a  body  during  different  periods  of  its  history.  In 
the  year  1846,  the  question  of  polygamy  came  up  be- 
fore the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign 
Missions  in  the  United  States.  Through  a  committee, 
of  which  the  eminent  Chancellor  Walworth,  of  New 
York,  was  chairman,  this  body  reported  against  in- 
structing missionaries  to  exclude  polygamists  from  the 
church.  This  report  was  adopted  without  a  dissent- 
ing voice.1  This  discussion  brought  out  some  inter- 
esting facts  having  especial  bearing  upon  the  views 
of  those  churches  which  numbered  polygamists  among 
their  communicants.  It  was  shown  that  the  secretaries 
of  the  board  appeared  to  consider  the  existence  of 
polygamy  in  the  churches  as  so  entirely  a  frivolous 
question  that  even  after  it  was  especially  brought  to 
their  notice  they  forbore  to  make  inquiries,  and  even 
when  polygamists  had  actually  been  admitted  into  the 
Mission  churches,  no  taint  of  disapproval  had  been 
made  by  the  Prudential  Committee.3  The  whole 
subject  was  left  to  the  decision  of  the  missionaries 
themselves,  one  of  whom  published  his  views  in  the 
"Boston  Recorder."  After  prevising  that  the  Bible  was 
their  rule  of  faith,  he  asks: 

Is  it  not  evident  from  Paul's  instruction  respecting 
the  qualifications  of  a  bishop,  viz.,  that  he  "should 
be  the  husband  of  one  wife"  that  polygamy  was  per- 
mitted in  the  primitive  church  under  the  apostles,  and 
that  too  in  circumstances  precisely  similar  to  those 
in  which  churches  are  gathered  among  the  heathen  at 
the  present  day.  If  so,  why  should  a  different  stand- 
ard be  set  up  than  that  set  up  by  the  apostles?" 

2.     The  Church  as  It  fs  —Parker  Pillsbury.  pp.  32—3—4—5 — 6. 
\     Report  of    the   Proceedings  0/  the   Missionary    Conference.— Mr.  Perkins' 
speech. 


POLYGAMY  405 

That  polygamy  is  not  regarded  as  contrary  to  the 
principles  of  Christianity  was  again  most  forcibly 
shown  in  its  endorsement  by  missionaries  located  in 
those  countries  where  this  custom  prevails.  One  of 
the  most  notable  instances  of  recent  church  action  in 
recognizing  polygamy  as  sustained  by  Christianity,  oc- 
curred a  few  years  since  in  Calcutta  during  a  Confer- 
ence upon  the  question.  This  body  was  convened  by 
the  missionaries  of  England  and  America  located  in 
India.  Its  immediate  cause  was  the  application  of 
Indian  converts,  the  husbands  of  several  wives,  for 
admission  to  the  church.  A  missionary  conference  of 
the  several  Christian  denominations  was  therefore 
called  for  the  purpose  of  deciding  upon  this  grave  re- 
quest. It  included  representatives  of  the  Episcopal, 
Baptist,  Presbyterian  and  Congregationalist  churches. 
Taking  the  Bible  as  authority  full  consideration  was 
given  to  the  subject.  Quotations  from  that  "holy 
book"  proved  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  conference  that 
not  alone  did  the  Bible  favor  polygamy,  but  that  God 
himself  endorsed,  regulated  and  sustained  the  institu- 
tion. In  addition  it  was  declared  that  these  converted 
polygamists"had  given  credible  evidence  of  their  per- 
sonal piety."  The  conference  therefore  unanimously 
rendered  favorable  decision  for  retention  of  the  polyg- 
amous members  within  the  respective  churches  to 
which  they  belonged,  upon  the  ground  that  as  both 
the  Jews  and  the  early  Christians  had  practiced  polyg- 
amy,  it  was  allowable  to  the  new  converts. 

If  a  convert  before  becoming  a  Christian,  has  mar- 
ried more  wives  than  one,  in  accordance  with  the  prac- 
tice of  the  Jewish  and  primitive  Christian  churches, 
he  shall  be  permitted  to  keep  them  all. 

Yet  apparently  as  a  concession  to  the  somewhat  al- 
truistic civilization  of  the  present    age,  which  outside 


406  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  the  church  does  not  look  upon  polygamous  mar- 
riages with  favor,  such  persons  were  declared  ineligi- 
ble to  any  office  in  the  church.  Rev.  David  O.  Al- 
len, D.  D.,  missionary  of  the  American  Board  in  India 
for  twenty-five  years  and  from  whose  report  of  the  ac- 
tion of  the  missionary  conference  the  above  facts  were 
gained,  said: 

If  polygamy  was  unlawful,  then  Leah  was  the  only 
wife  of  Jacob  and  none  but  her  children  were  legiti- 
mate. Rachel  as  well  as  Bilhah  and  Zilpah  were 
merely  mistresses  and  their  children,  six  in  number, 
were  bastards,  the  offspring  of  adulterous  connection. 
And  yet  there  is  no  intimation  of  any  such  views  and 
feelings  in  Laban's  family,  or  in  Jacob's  family  or  in 
Jewish  history.  Bilhah  and  Zilpah  are  called  Jacob's 
wives  (Genesis  xxxvii:  2.).  God  honored  the  sons 
of  Rachael,  Bilhah  and  Zilpah  equally  with  the  sons 
of  Leah,  made  them  patriarchs  of  seven  of  the  tribes 
of  the  nation  and  gave  them  equal  inheritances  in 
Canaan. 

Thus  the  endorsement  of  polygamy  as  not  contrary 
to  the  Bible,  or  to  Christianity,  is  shown  by  action  of 
Christian  churches  both  in  the  United  States  and  India 
within  the  present  century;  and  we  can  readily  under- 
stand why  a  gentleman  from  the  New  England  states 
traveling  in  Utah  said:  "Mormonism  seems  a  very  de- 
vout sect  of  the  Christian  church,  differing  but  little 
from  the  great  body  of  Christian  people.4"  Nor  is  this 
judgment  at  all  strange  as  we  find  polygamy  endorsed 
by  the  majority  of  Christian  sects.  Nor  can  we  be 
surprised  that  the  Mormons  of  Utah  and  the  adjoining 
states  should  look  upon  the  opposition  of  the  United 
States  to  their  practice  of  polygamy,  as  an  unjust  in- 
terference with  an  established  custom  of  the  Christian 

4.  The  same  hymns  are  sung,  the  same  doctrine  preached,  the  same  necessity 
for  salvation  emphasized,  and  justification  by  faith  is  made  the  corner  stone  of 
redemption. 


Polygamy  407 

church,  recognized  and  indorsed  through  the  ages,  as 
not  alone  part  of  the  Jewish  and  early  christian 
practice,  but  permitted  as  allowable  at  the  present 
day.  President  Eliot,  of  Harvard,  speaking  in  Salt 
Lake  City,  compared  the  Mormons  to  the  Puritans, 
thus  throwing  the  weight  of  his  statement  as  to  the 
harmony  between  Mormonism  and  other  christian 
sects. 

The  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  "Herald,"  in  forgetfulness  of 
early  puritan  history,  says  "It  would  be  interesting  to 
know  from  what  point  of  view  President  Eliot  took 
nis  observation,"  and  refers  to  "Mormon  Contempt  and 
debasement  of  Womanhood  ;  Mormon  discouragement 
of  intelligence  and  education  among  its  dupes  and 
victims,"  etc.  The  "  Herald  "  has  apparently  forgotten 
the  trial  of  women  for  heresy  by  the  Puritans;  their 
imprisonment,  heavily  ironed  in  airless  jails,  for  the 
crime  of  religious  free  thought;  the  flogging  of  naked 
women  on  Boston  Common  by  the  Puritans  for  free 
speech  and  their  being  executed  as  witches,  in  the 
Puritan  colony  of  Massachusetts.  The  "Herald"  has 
apparently  forgotten  that  although  the  first  money 
given  for  the  foundation  of  Harvard  itself  was  by  a  wo- 
man, her  sex,  "dupe  and  victim,"  is  still  denied  the 
full  advantage  of  education  in  that  institution.  It  for- 
gets that  although  the  first  plot  of  ground  for  a  free 
school  in  the  Puritan  colony  of  Massachusetts  was 
given  by  a  woman,  girls  were  denied  education  even 
in  common  schools  until  it  became  necessary  to  permit 
their  attendance  during  the  summer  months  while  the 
boys  were  engaged  in  fishing,  in  order  to  retain  pos- 
session of  school  moneys.  The  "Herald"  seems  unaware 
of  the  vigorous  letter  of  Mrs.  Hannah  Adams,  wife  of 
the  second  president  of  the  United  States,  to  her  hus- 


408  IAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

band,  John  Adams,  when  he  was  a  member  of  the  first 
Congress,  in  reference  to    the   need    of   education    for 
women.     Should  the  "Herald"  pursue  its  investigations 
still  farther,  it  will  find    the  Puritans    connected    with 
the  most  serious  "crimes"     against    humanity;    it  will 
discover     priestly     and     governmental     "usurpation," 
Puritan  "fanaticism  and  bigotry;"  even   Puritan  "dis- 
loyalty."   When  President    Eliott  favorably  compared 
the  Christian  Puritans   and  the      Christian    Mormons, 
he  spoke  both  as  a  close  reader  of  Puritan  history  and 
a  close  observer    of  Mormon    history;  his    declaration 
of  their  similarity  to  each    other  cannot    be  denied  by 
the  candid  historian.      Building    upon    the   same  com- 
mon foundation,  acknowledging  the  same  common  or- 
Q,  the  doctrines  of  the  two  systems  necessarily  bear 
close  resemblance    to    each  other.5     Under    the  Chris- 
tian theory  regarding  woman,    her  origin  and    her  du- 
ties, it  should  not  be  regarded  as  at    all    strange  that 
polygamy  should  find  defenders  in  the  christian  world. 
Nor  is  it  to  be  looked  upon  as  at  all  as  surprising  that 
the  Mormons,  the    most  recent  Protestant  sect,  should 
teach  polygamy  as  a   divinely    organized    institution, 
nor  that  their  arguments  in  its  favor  should  be  drawn 
from  the  Bible  and    not    from    the    book  of    Mormon. 
That  polygamy  was  not    an  original    Mormon  tenet  is 
well  known;   it  was  derived  from    a  professed    revela- 
tion to  Joseph  Smith,  sustained  by  biblical  authority. 
The    polygamous    Mahommedans  regard    Christ    as  a 
prophet,    the    same  as    the    Mormons  respect    the  au- 
thority of  the  Bible.     The    Mormon  marriage  formula 

5.  Historians  have  declared  that  "  Nowhere  did  the  spirit  of  Puritanism  in 
its  evil  as  well  as  its  good,  more  thoroughly  express  itself  than  in  Massachu- 
md  Rhode  Island."  Boston,  for  its  atrocities  was  known  as  "The  Bloody 
Town."  "The  Emancipation  of  Massachusetts  "  by  BrooksAdams,  gives  a  very 
correct  account  of  the  retarding  influence  of  Puritan  bigotry  in  the  development 
of  intellectual  truth  in  the  New  England  States. 


POLYGAMY  409 

directs  the  man  to  look  to  God,  but  enjoins  the  wo- 
man to  look  toward  her  husband  as  God,  rendering 
him  the  same  unquestioning  obedience  that  has  been 
demanded  from  all  Christian  wives  through  the  ages; 
the  priest,  as  customary  with  the  hierarchal  class,  de- 
claring himself  endowed  with  an  authority  from  on 
high  to  bind  or  to  loose  on  earth,  seals  the  union  of 
the  pair  for  time  and  eternity.  Although  the  mar- 
riage ceremony  of  the  Mormon  church  is  more  com- 
plex, in  many  respects  it  parallels  that  of  the  Presby- 
terians of  Scotland  during  the  early  day  of  the  Refor- 
mation, authority  for  woman's  degradation  in  each 
case  being  derived  from  the  Bible,  the  language  in 
each  instance  being  unfit  for  publication.* 

An  epistle  of  the  First  Presidency  to  the  Church  of 
Jesus  Christ  of  Latter  Day  Saints,  in  General  Confer- 
ence,  said: 

"The  Gospel  of  the  Son  of  God,  brings  life  and  im- 
mortality to  light."  We  believe  in  Jerusalems,  such 
as  the  one  which  John  saw  when  banished  as  a  slave 
to  the  Isle  of  Patmos  because  of  his  religion,  where 
promises  made  to  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob  are  to  be 
fulfilled;  "which  Had  a  wall  great  and  high,  and  had 
twelve  gates,  and  at  the  gates  twelve  angels" — and 
the  twelve  gates  were  twelve  pearls ;  every  several 
gate  was  one  pearl."  Its  walls  were  of  jasper,  its 
streets  and  the  city  were  pure  gold.  The  foundations 
of  the  wall  were  garnished  with  all  manner  of  precious 
stones,  and  the  glory  of  God  did  lighten  it,  "and  the 
Lamb  is  the  light  thereof."  Its  pearly  gates  had  writ- 
ten upon  them  the  names  of  the  twelve  tribes  of  the 
children  of  Israel  and  the  foundations  of  its  walls, 
"the  names  of  the  Twelve  Apostles  of  the  Lamb." 
'The  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb  shall  be  in  it, 
and  His  servants  shall  serve  Him;    and  they  shall  see 

6.  The  true  character  of  Presbyterian  Pastors  in  Scotland  in  Time  0/ 
Charles  II. 


41 0  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

His  face;  and  His  name  shall  be  in  their  foreheads. 
The  porters  of  its  gates  were  angels  and  its  light  the 
glory  of  God."  What  was  written  on  those  pearly 
gates?  The  names  of  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel. 
Who  was  Israel?  Jacob.  From  whom  did  the  twelve 
tribes  descend?  From  Jacob.  What  were  their  names? 
The  names  of  the  sons  of  Jacob,  which  he  had  by 
four  wives.  Jacob,  then,  was  a  polygamist?  Yes; 
he  was  one  of  those  barbarians  of  which  the  Judge 
of  the  Third  Judicial  District  says:  "These  practices 
might  have  been  proper  in  a  barbarous  and  primitive 
time— in  crude  times — but  they  won't  do  now.  Civ- 
ilization lias  thrown  them  away.  It  won't  do  to  gather 
up  these  old  customs  and  practices  out  of  the  by-gone 
barbarism  and  by-gone  ages,  and  attempt  to  palm  them 
upon  a  free  and  intelligent  and  civilized  people  in 
these  days. ' 

How  free  the  people  are  in  Utah  to-day  needs  no 
discussion.  If  the  judge  cannot  stand  these  things  it 
would  seem  God  and  the  Lamb  can,  for  He  is  the 
light  of  the  city,  on  the  gates  of  which  are  written  the 
names  of  twelve  men,  the  sons  of  one  man  by  four 
women — a  polygamist.  Had  Jacob  lived  now,  the 
judges  would  have  sent  spies,  spotters  and  deputy 
marshals  after  him,  and  if  caught  would  have  sent  him 
to  the  penitentiary. 

This  epistle  boldly  challenges  christian  belief  in 
the  New  Jerusalem  as  based  upon  polygamy;  upon  its 
gates  the  names  of  twelve  polygamous  children  are 
inscribed,  sons  of  one  man,  children  of  four  mothers, 
two  wives  and  two  concubines.  Of  Solomon,  this 
epistle  could  likewise  have  spoken,  whom  the  Bible 
represents  as  the  wisest  man  that  lived;  his  wives 
numbering  three  hundred,  his  concubines  seven  hun- 
dred. Nor  are  Jacob  and  Solomon  two  isolated  in- 
sances  of  Jewish  polygamy;  Mormons,  in  common 
with  the  lay  and  clerical  authorities  previously  re- 
ferred to,  find    abundant    proof  for    their  sanction    of 


POLYGAMY  411 

polygamy  both  in  the  revelations  of  the  Old  and  the 
New  Testaments.  But  each  human  being  entering  the 
world  is  a  revelation  to  himself,  to  herself,  and  the 
revelation  inherently  abiding  in  all  women,  declares 
against  such  degradation  of  herself  and  her  sex. 

Brigham  Young,  the  first  Mormon  president,  hus- 
band of  nineteen  wives,  father  of  forty-two  children, 
possessed  great  natural  fascination;  was  a  man  of  won- 
derful magnetism.  Of  him  a  daughter  said:  "his 
slightest  touch  was  a  caress."  His  seventh  wife,  an 
elegant  and  fashionable  woman,  was  said  by  her 
daughter  to  worship  the  ground  that  he  walked  upon 
and  never  to  have  been  herself  since  his  death.  From 
this  favorite  daughter  of  Young  who  after  his  death 
apostatized  from  the  Mormon  religion,  much  has  been 
learned  in  regard  to  the  real  feeling  of  these  polyga- 
mous wives  toward  each  other,  which  she  characterized 
as  "an  outward  semblance  of  good  will,  but  in  reality 
a  condition  of  deadly  hatred."  Such  outward  sem- 
blance of  good  will,  such  real  condition  of  deadly  ha- 
tred is  the  result  of  all  forms  of  religion  which  subju- 
gate the  many  to  the  caprice  of  the  few, even  though 
done  under  assumption  of  divine  authority.  That 
envy,  jealousy  and  hatred  should  be  among  the  dire 
results  of  woman's  religious  degradation,  cannot  be 
a  subject  of  surprise  to  the  student  of  human  nature; 
and  it  is  supreme  proof  of  the  bondage  of  the  human 
will  under  fancied  authority  from  God,  that  such 
minds  as  those  of  Luther,  Milton,  Seldon,  Beecher, 
Walworth  and  others  like  them  should  uphold  a  sys- 
tem so  degrading  in  character  alike  to  the  men  and 
the  women  who  practice  it.  Young's  daughter  Dora 
with  five  of  her  sister's,  was  expelled  a  few  years  since 
from  the  Mormon  church  for  having    gone  to  law  with 


412  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

certain  of  the  Mormon  brethren  who  attempted  to  rob 
them  of  their  patrimony.  The  elders  realizing  the 
injury  these  women  might  do  for  the  church,  sent  a 
couple  of  teachers  to  interview  Dora,  invoking  her 
father's  name  to  influence  her  dropping  the  suit7  and 
return  to  the  church.  Dora  had  been  aroused  by 
a  sense  of  the  iniquity  ot  the  church,  through  hearing 
its  elders  declare  upon  oath  that  they  knew  nothing 
of  polygamous  marriage  ceremonies  being  performed, 
while  the  same  day  ot  this  denial  no  less  than  fourteen 
such  marriages  had  taken  place  at  the  Endowment 
House.  Referring  to  the  conscientious  belief  held 
by  many  women  of  the  necessity  of  polygamous  mar- 
riage in  order  to  secure  the  sanctification  requisite  for 
their  salvation,  Dora  said: 

Since  my  eyes  have  been  opened  I  sometimes  ask 
myself  how  I  could  ever  possibly  have  regarded  the 
horrible  and  licentious  practices  of  which  I  was  aware, 
and  the  terrible  things  I  have  witnessed  with  any- 
thing but  horror?  And  yet  I  was  brought  up  to  con- 
sider these  things  right  and  I  thought  nothing  about 
them— just  as  I  suppose  children  brought  up  where  hu- 
man sacrifices  are  offered,  learn  to  regard  such  sac- 
rifice as  right  and  to  look  upon  them  with  indifference. 

Experience  taught  Dora  that  the  natural  character 
of  the  human  mind  soon  accommodates  itself  to  circum- 
stances, becomes  in  accord  with    its  environment,  and 

7.  When  her  father's  name  was  mentioned,  Dora  said,  "  Don't  speak  to  me  of 
my  father,  Mr.  Morris,  you  and  the  whol2  church  know  that  my  father,  prophet 
though  you  call  him.  broke  many  a  woman's  heart.  If  it  is  required  of  me  to 
break  as  many  hearts  and  ruin  as  many  women  as  my  father  did,  I  should  go  to 
perdition  before  I  would  go  back  into  the  church  again,  and — " 

"Oh,  sister  Dora!"  exclaimed  the  teacher  in  consternation  at  her  clearness  of 
vision. 

"It  is  a  fact  and  you  know  it,"  she  continued,  'you  know  that  many  of  his 
wives  died  of  broken  hearts  and  how  did  he  leave  the  rest?  Look  at  my  mother 
and  look  at  all  the  rest  of  them!  A  religion  that  breaks  women's  hearts  and 
ruins  them  is  of  the  devil.  That's  what  Mormonism  does.  Don't  talk  to  me  of 
my  father." — Reported  in  the  Chicago  Inter  Ocean. 


POLYGAMY  413 

regards  as  right  whatever  law  or  custom  teaches  is 
right.  This,  called  the  conservative  tendency  of  the 
human  mind,  is  merely  the  result  of  habitude  of 
thought  induced  by  authoritative  teaching.  Both  church 
and  state  have  availed  themselves  of  the  influence  of 
authoritative  custom  for  the  perpetuation  of  power  In 
this  way  despotism  has  gained  its  chief  victories.  The 
beliefs  to  which  persons  have  been  habituated  from 
childhood,  are,  without  investigation,  deemed  truths 
by  the  majority  of  the  world.  No  step  so  great  in  its 
far-reaching  results  as  that  of  independent  thought; 
none  so  greatly  feared  by  priestly  and  civil  power; 
and  among  women  during  the  Christian  ages,  none 
has  met  with  such  swift  rebuke,  no  sin  has  been  char- 
acterized as  its  equal  in  malignancy.  Therefore  while 
the  world  has  possessed  full  knowledge  of  man's  opin- 
ions regarding  polygamy,  not  until  the  present  century 
and  in  the  United  States  have  the  views  of  women 
been  attainable.  Until  the  present  age  there  has  been 
no  escape  from  bondage  for  the  polygamous  wife,  no 
opportunity  for  learning  its  effects  upon  her  own  inner 
self.  From  the  daughter  of  its  chief  prophet,  the  man 
whose  fame  in  connection  with  polygamy  has  gone 
throughout  the  world,  we  have  learned  something  of 
its  evils  as  seen  and  felt  by  woman.  Yet  other  and 
still  stronger  testimony  is  not  lacking.  A  private  let- 
ter written  in  Salt  Lake  City  a  few  years  since,  pub- 
lished in  the  "Boston  Transcript"  under  head  of  "The 
Silent  Woes  of  Mormonism"  depicts  one  phase  in  its 
influence  upon  the  unborn. 

"A  few  years  ago  an  educated  young  journalist  came 
to  Salt  Lake  City  from  Europe  with  his  young  wife. 
Both  became  sincere  believers  in  Mormonism.  Then 
strong  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  by  the  priesthood 
upon  the  husband  to  force   him  into   polygamy.     The 


414  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

wife  finding  opposition  in  vain,  at  last  gave  her  nom- 
inal consent.  A  second  bride  was  brought  into  the 
house.  In  a  short  time  the  first  wife  became  a  mother, 
but  the  infant  never  cried  aloud.  It  came  voiceless 
into  the  world.  But  it  wept  in  secret  all  the  time. 
Sleeping  or  waking  the  tears  flowed  from  its  clused 
eyes,  and  in  a  few  weeks  it  died.  The  mother  said 
that  it  died  of  a  broken  heart.  Every  day  of  its  life 
it  shed  the  tears  that  its  mother  had  repressed  before 
its  birth.' 

The  experience  of  Caroline  Owens,  whose  suit  for 
bigamy  against,  her  polygamous  hubsand,  John  D. 
Miles,  appealed  from  the  Supreme  Court  of  Utah  to 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States — a  suit  im- 
plicating Delegate  Cannon,  of  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States,  in  its  tale  of  wrong,  presents  another 
phase.  Miss  Owens  was  an  English  girl  acquainted 
with  Miles  from  her  childhood.  He  had  emigrated  to 
Utah,  but  in  England  on  a  visit  he  urged  her  to  return 
with  him,  pomising  her  marriage  when  they  reached 
Salt  Lake  City.  She  questioned  him  as  to  polygamy. 
He  replied  that  a  few  old  men  were  allowed  more  than 
one  wife,  but  that  young  men  like  himself  had  but 
one,  although  he  spoke  of  one  Emily  Spencer  who  had 
expressed  affection  for  him  but  whom  he  had  no  in- 
tention of  marrying.  Upon  reaching  Salt  Lake  City, 
Miss  Owens  staid  at  the  house  of  United  States 
Delegate  George  Q.  Cannon,  where  but  one  wife  re- 
sided. When  the  day  of  the  wedding  arrived  she  went 
through  the  ceremonies  of  the  Endowment  House,  last- 
ing from  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  three 
in  the  afternoon,  and  had  been  wedded  to  John  D. 
Miles.      She  says: 

"I  can  never  tell  the  horrors  of  the  next  few  hours. 
Before  that  day  was  over  my  love  had  turned  to  burn- 
ing hatred,    When  we  started  to  go  home,  Miles    told 


POLYGAMY  415 

me  that  he  had  invited  Emily  Spencer  to  our  wedding 
reception.  I  said  if  she  came  to  the  house  I  should 
leave.  He  replied  he  was  now  master.  I  went  to  my 
room  and  dressed  for  the  reception,  which  took  place 
at  Cannon's  other  house,  where  he  kept  his  three 
wives.  When  I  went  down  there  was  a  crowd  there, 
among  the  rest  a  plain  looking  girl  in  a  calico  dress, 
to  whom  I  was  introduced.  It  was  Emily  Spencer. 
I  did  not  speak  to  her.  After  a  while  they  wanted  to 
dance,  and  asked  me  to  play.  Emily  Spencer  sat  on 
a  piano  stool.  I  told  her  to  get  up.  Miles  came  for- 
ward and  said,  'Sit  still,  Emily  Spencer,  my  wife.'  1 
felt  as  though  I  had  been  shot.  I  said,  'Your  wife! 
then  what  am  I?'  He  said,  'You  are  both  my  wives.' 
All  at  once  my  shame  flashed  over  me.  Here  I  was 
dishonored,  the  polygamous  wife  of  a  Mormon.  I  ran 
out  of  the  house,  bent  only  on  escape,  I  did  not  think 
where;  I  could  not  do  it,  though,  for  Miles  and  young 
Cannon,  a  son  of  the  delegate,  ran  after  me  and  dragged 
me  back.  We  had  been  intending  to  stay  in  that 
house  all  night,  but  I  stole  away  and  returned  to  the 
other  house,  where  I  had  been  living  the  three  weeks 
since  my  arrival  from  England.  I  noticed  there  was 
no  key  in  the  lock,  but  shot  a  little  bolt  and  piled  up 
chairs  against  the  door.  I  cried  myself  to  sleep.  The 
next  thing  I  knew  I  don't  know  what  time  it  was, 
Miles  stood  in  the  room  and  was  locking  the  door  on 
the  inside.  I  screamed,  because  Mrs.  Cannon  and 
Miles'  step-mother  had  been  living  in  the  house  with 
me.  Miles  said  I  need  not  take  on,  for  brother  Can- 
non had  anticipated  that  I  would  make  trouble  and  had 
had  the  house  cleared  of  every  one  else.  I  found  out 
that  it  was  so.  He  told  me  that  I  might  as  well  sub- 
mit; there  was  no  law  here  to  control  the  saints;  there 
was  no  power  on  earth  that  would  save  me." 

She  was  subjected  to  great  brutality,  again  and 
again  beaten  and  exhorted  to  bear  her  condition  pa- 
tiently as  a  sister  to  be  exalted;  because  of  her  rebel- 
lious spirit  she  was  hectored  and  threatened,  stoned, 
jeered  at    and    abused    in    many  ways,  all    under  pre- 


416  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

tense  of  religion,  until  after  three  weeks  of  such  mat- 
rimonial life  she  escaped  and  among  the  "Gentiles" 
found  rest  and  help.  She  speaks  of  polygamous  wives 
as  half-clad,  poorly  fed,  toiling  like  serfs  without  hope 
under  the  chains  of  a  religious  despotism.8  Mor- 
mon polygamy  possesses  the  peculiar  feature  of  trac- 
ing the  system  of  plural  marriage  to  the  gods;  a 
father  and  mother  god  and  goddess;  a  grandfather  a 
grandmother  god  and  goddess,  and  thus  in  constantly 
ascending  scale;  from  these  they  claim  the  origin  of 
their  own  polygamous  system.  Every  Mormon  man, 
however  depraved,  is  taught  that  if  he  lives  up  to  the 
plural  marriage  system,  upon  his  death  he  will  become 
a  god,  holding  power  and  procreating  children  to  all 
eternity.  But  should  any  Mormon,  however  pure  his 
life,  die  unmarried,  he  has  forever  lost  his  opportunity 
of  becoming  a  god,  but  remains  simply  an  angel,  a 
servant  of  the  polygamous  gods.9  The  belief  is  in- 
culcated in  woman,  that  to  her  marriage  is  even  more 
necessary  than  to  man.  Without  marriage  there  is  no 
resurrection  for  her,  and  thus  believing  polygamy  a 
requisite  for  eternal  salvation,  thousands  silently  en- 
dure the  woes  of  this  condition.  This  latest  christian 
sect,  this  final  outgrowth  of  centuries  of  barbarous 
teaching,  is  the  most  determined  effort  against  the 
integrity  of  womanhood  since  the  days  of  the    Jewish 

8.  A  correspondent  writing  for  an  eastern  paper  from  Salt  Lake  City,  a  few 
years  since,  said:  "Of  all  the  ill-conditioned,  God-forsaken,  hopeless  looking 
people  I  ever  saw,  the  women  here  beat  them  all.  Yesterday  was  supply  day  for 
the  Mormons  living  outside  the  city.  They  bring  their  wives  into  town  in  dead- 
axle  wagons,  and  fill  the  vacant  room  with  children  who  look  fully  as  bad  as  their 
mothers,  if  not  worse.  Many  of  them  are  lean  and  hump-backed  and  all  look 
sickly  and  ill-clad.  Two  out  of  three  women  on  the  streets  yesterday,  had  nurs- 
ing infants  in  their  arms.  One  of  the  saints  had  thirteen  wives  and  ninety-four 
children;  another  had  nine  wives  and  five  nursling  babies,  which  he  exhibited 
with  all  the  pride  I  should  take  in  a  lot  of  fine  horses.  I  never  realized  the  in- 
fernal nature  of  the  institution  nor  its  effect  upon  society  as  I  do  now." 

9.  Key  to  Theology,  by  Parley  Pratt 


POLYGAMY  417 

patriarchs.  The  duty  of  giving  birth  to  numerous 
children  in  order  to  save  waiting  spirits  and  to  swell 
the  glory  of  the  polygamous  father  in  his  after  death 
godship,  is  as  thoroughly  taught  as  when  in  mediaeval 
days  monk  and  priest  preached  woman's  duty  to  con- 
stantly add  numbers  to  the  church.  The  late  Helen 
H.  Jackson  who  had  thoroughly  investigated  the  Mor- 
mon question,  writing  of  polygamy  in  the  "Century," 
said: 

"The  doctrine,  to  be  completely  studied,  must  be 
considered  both  from  the  man's  point  of  view  and  the 
woman's,  the  two  being,  for  many  reasons,  not  iden- 
tical. But  it  is  the  woman's  view  of  it,  her  belief 
and  position  in  regard  to  it,  which  are  most  misrepre- 
sented and  misunderstood  by  the  world.  If  the  truth 
were  known,  there  would  be  few  persons  in  whose 
minds  would  be  any  sentiment  except  profound  pity 
for  the  Mormon  woman — pity,  moreover,  intensified  by 
admiration.  There  has  never  been  a  class  or  sect  of 
women  since  the  world  began  who  have  endured  for  re- 
ligion's sake  a  tithe  of  what  has  been,  and  is,  and  for- 
ever must  be,  endured  by  the  women  of  the  Mormon 
church.  It  has  become  customary  to  hold  them  as 
disreputable  women,  light  and  loose,  unfit  to  associate 
with  the  virtuous,  undeserving  of  any  esteem.  Never 
was    greater  injustice  committed. 

"The  two  doctrines  which  most  help  the  Mormon 
woman  to  endure  the  suffering  of  living  in  plural  mar- 
riage are  the  doctrines  of  pre-existence  and  of  the 
eternal  continuance  of  the  patriarchal  order.  The 
mere  revelation  from  Joseph  Smith,  to  the  effect  that 
polygamy  was  to  be  permitted  and  was  praiseworthy 
and  desirable,  would  never,  alone,  have  brought  the 
Mormon  women  to  hearty  acceptance  of  the  institu- 
tion. 

"They  are  taught  and  most  unquestioningly  believe 
that  the  universe  is  full  of  spirits  waiting,  and  wait- 
ing impatiently,  to  be  born  on  this  earth  These  spir- 
its have  already    passed    through    one  stage    of  disci- 


418  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

pline  and  probation  and  are  to  enter  upon  a  second 
one  here.  The  Rev.  Edward  Beecher  once  published 
a  book  setting  forth  a  similar  doctrine.  The  Mormon 
doctrine  goes  farther  than  Dr.  Beecher's,  inasmuch  as 
it  teaches  that  these  spirits  may  select  of  their  own 
free  will  where  and  how  they  will  be  born  into  their 
earthly  probation;  and  that  they  are,  one  and  all,  anx- 
ious to  be  born  in  the  Mormon  church,  as  the  one  true 
Zion,  where  alone  are  to  be  found  safety  and  salva- 
tion. They  also  believe  that  the  time  is  limited  dur- 
ing which  these  spirits  can  avail  themselves  of  this 
privilege  of  being  born  into  Zion.  They  look  for  the 
return  of  Jesus  Christ  to  the  earth  before  long  and  for 
the  establishment  then  of  the  millennial  dispensation, 
after  which  no  more  of  the  spirits  can  be  reborn  and 
reclaimed.  Hence  the  obligation  resting  upon  every 
faithful  Mormon  woman  to  bring  into  the  world,  in 
the  course  of  her  life,  as  many  children  as  possible. 
Not  only  does  she  thus  contribute  to  the  building  up 
and  strengthening  of  the  true  church  but  she  rescues 
souls  already  existing  and  in  danger  of  eternal  death. 
It  is  easy  to  sneer  at  this  doctrine  as  inconceivable 
rubbish;  and,  in  truth,  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  is 
hard  to  conceive  of  an  educated  mind  receiving  it ; 
but  it  is  no  more  absurd  or  unprovable  than  hundreds 
of  kindred  speculations  and  notions  which  have  been 
devised,  preached  and  passionately  believed  in  times 
past.  Neither  has  the  absurdity  or  non-absurdity, 
falsity  or  truth  of  the  belief,  anything  to  do  with  our 
judgment  of  its  believers." 

In  furtherance  of  its  plan  for  temporal  power,  the 
astuteness  of  the  Mormon  theocracy  is  shown  in  this 
doctrine  of  pre-existent  spirits10  continually  wait- 
ing birth  upon  the  earth.  This  together  with  its  other 
theory  of  the  superior  power  and  godhood  in  a  future 
life,  of  the  father  of  numerous  children,  imposes  the 
condition  of  continual  motherhood  upon  Mormon 
wives. 

But  during  the  christian  ages  this  theory  of  woman's 

10.  Ibid. 


POLYGAMY  419 

duty  to  constantly  bear  children  in  order  to  the  uphold- 
ing of  the  church  has  ever  been  taught.  Even  Philip 
Melancthon,  the  great  associate  of  Luther  in  the  Ref- 
ormation, saying:  "If  a  woman  becomes  weary  of 
bearing  children,  that  matters  not.  Let  her  only  die 
from  bearing,  she  is  there  to  do  it."  So  little  does 
the  church  yet  understand  the  right  of  woman  to  an 
existence  for  herself  alone  that  not  five  years  have 
passed  since  a  minister  of  the  Methodist  church  in 
the  state  of  New  York  publicly  declared  he  saw  no 
reason  for  woman's  creation  but  the  bearing  of  children. 
In  a  lecture  upon  Mormonism  in  Boston,  Prof.  Con- 
year,  of  the  Salt  Lake  City  Collegiate  Institute,  speak- 
ing of  the  sufferings  endured  by  Mormon  women  in 
order  thus  to  secure  personal  salvation,  said: 

"Hate  the  system  as  you  hate  Satan,  but  have  mercy 
on  the  people  who  are  there  in  such  a  bondage — a 
bondage  worse  than  that  in  which  the  negro  in  the 
South  was  ever  held.  ' 

But  these  doctrines  accepted  as  truth  by  devout  Mor- 
mon women  are  not  more  degrading  to  them,  not  more 
injurious  to  civilization,  than  is  the  belief  of  orthodox 
christian  women  in  regard  to  the  frailty  and  primal 
sin  of  her  sex  and  the  curse  of  her  Creator  upon  her 
in  consequence.  To  this  belief  she  has  been  trained 
from  her  childhood  as  her  mother  before  her  and  her 
feminine  relatives  for  innumerable  centuries,and  with- 
out investigation  she  has  accepted  these  doctrines  of 
the  church  as  true.  Yet  all  these  theories  so  degrad- 
ing to  woman  are  of  purely  human  masculine  origin, 
their  object,  power  for  man,  and  the  subordination  of 
woman  to  him  in  every  relation  of  life.  The  eternal 
continuance  of  the  patriarchal  order,  a  doctrine  of  the 
Mormons,  is  paralleled  among  orthodox  christians 
by  the  teaching  of  an  eternal  continuance  of  the  male 


420  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

priestly  order,  woman  forever  excluded.  The  Mor- 
mon woman  no  more  fully  places  herself  in  position  of 
servant  to  her  husband,  whom  at  the  Endowment 
House  marriage  ceremony  she  promises  to  "obey," 
than  has  the  orthodox  christian  woman  through  the 
ages,  when  she  has  promised  obedience  to  her  hus- 
band at  the  marriage  altar.  Nor  is  the  general  relig- 
ious training  of  the  two  very  different.  The  Mormon 
woman  is  taught  that  her  salvation  depends  upon  po- 
lygamous marriage  and  her  subjection  to  her  husband 
in  all  things;  the  othodox  christian  woman  is  taught 
that  her  salvation  depends  upon  her  belief  that  woman 
brought  sin  into  the  world,  in  punishment  whereof 
God  placed  her  in  subjection  to  man;  and  during  the 
ages  her  promise  of  obedience  to  man  has  been  held 
as  an  integral  part  of  the  marriage  ceremony.  Nor 
did  a  change  begin  to  take  place  until  after  the  in- 
auguration of  the  woman  suffrage  reform.  Not  until 
woman  herself  rebelled  against  such  annihilation  of 
her  own  conscience  and  responsibility,  did  a  few  sects 
in  some  instances  omit  this  promise  from  their  forms 
of  marriage,  although  it  still  remains  a  portion  of  the 
Greek,  Catholic  and  Anglican  ceremony  as  well  as  of 
other  Protestant  sects.  The  shock  of  finding  educated 
women  of  New  England  birth,  members  of  the  Mor- 
mon church  as  polygamous  wives,  is  lessened  upon  a 
careful  analysis  of  the  Mormon  doctrine  in  compari- 
son with  those  of  orthodox  Christianity  regarding  wo- 
men :  all  alike  rest  upon  the  same  foundation;  all 
teach  that  sin  entered  the  world  through  woman;  all 
alike  darken  the  understanding  through  such  false 
teaching.  The  women  of  the  Mormon  church  received 
their  training  under  orthodox  Christianity,  which  laid 
the    foundation     of     their  self  contempt.11     With    the 

ii.  The  following  conversation  took  place  between  a  mistress  and  an  Irish  ser- 


POLYGAMY  42 1 

professed  revelation  of  the  Book  of  Mormon,  a  class  of 
priests  arose  who  no  less  positively  and  authoritatively 
asserted  its  doctrines  to  be  of  God  than  the  priesthood 
of  other  divisions  of  Christianity  assert  the  Bible 
to  be  of  God;  and  alike  each  declare  themselves  and 
their  followers  to  be  his  chosen  people.  "By  author- 
ity of  the  priesthood  of  God,"  has  carried  weight  in  all 
ages,  and  no  greater  weight  among  the  Mormons  of  the 
present  day  than  among  Christians  of  all  ages.  Under 
the  christian  theory  regarding  the  origin  and  duties 
of  woman  it  is  not  surprising  that  polygamy  should 
ever  have  found  defenders  in  the  christian  world,  nor 
is  it  at  all  singular  that  Mormonism  as  "the  latest 
founded  christian  sect"  should  teach  polygamy  as  a 
divinely  organized  institution,  drawing  its  arguments 
from  the  Bible.  Bishop  Lunt  of  that  church,  defend- 
ing polygamy  as  of  divine  origin,  said: 

God  revealed  to  Joseph  Smith  the  polygamous  sys- 
tem. It  is  quite  true  that  his  widow  declared  that 
no  such  revelation  was  ever  made,  but  that  was  be- 
cause she  had  lost  the  spirit.  God  commanded  the 
human  race  to  multiply  and  replenish  the  earth.  Abra- 
ham had  two  wives,  and  the  Almighty  honored  the 
second  one  by  a  direct  communication.  Jacob  had 
Leah  and  Zilpah.  David  had  a  plurality  of  wives, 
and  was  a  man  after  God's  own  heart.  God  gave 
him  Saul's  two  wives,  and  only  condemned  his  adul- 
teries. Moses,  Gideon  and  Joshua  had  each  a  plural- 
ity of  wives.  Solomon  had  wives  and  concubines  by 
hundreds,  though  we  do  not  believe  in  the  concubine 
system.  We  leave  that  to  the  Gentiles.  Virtue  and 
chastity  wither  beneath  the  monogamic  institution, 
which  was  borrowed  from  the  pagan  nations  by  the  early 

vant  girl:  "Bridget,  why  are  not  women  ever  priests?"  "Oh!  they  couldn't  be; 
they're  too  wicked."  "You  don't  believe  such  nonsense,  do  you — you  don't  believe 
women  are  more  wicked  than  men?"  "Yes  ma'am,"  replied  Bridget  with  empha- 
sis; "they're  a  dale  more  wicked;  they  can't  iver  be  prastes,  for  they  brought  sin 
into  the  world.    Eve  was  the  very  first  sinner;  I  learned  it  all  in  the  catechism." 


422  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Christians.  It  was  prophesied  that  in  the  latter  days 
seven  women  would  lay  hold  of  one  man  and  demand 
to  bear  his  name,  that  they  might  not  be  held  in  dis- 
honor. The  Protestants  and  Catholics  assail  us  with 
very  poor  grace  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  first 
pillars  of  the  religion  they  claim  to  profess  were  men 
like  the  saints  of  Utah — polygamists.  The  fact  cannot 
be  denied.  Polygamy  is  virtually  encouraged  and 
taught  by  example  by  the  Old  Testament.  It  may 
appear  shocking  and  blasphemous  to  Gentiles  for  us 
to  say  so,  but  we  hold  that  Jesus  Christ  himself  was 
a  polygamist.  He  was  surrounded  by  women  con- 
stantly, as  the  Scriptures  attest,  and  those  women  were 
his  polygamous  wives.  The  vast  disparity  between 
the  sexes  in  all  settled  communities  is  another  argu- 
ment in  favor  of  polygamy,  to  say  nothing  of  the  dis- 
inclination among  young  male  Gentiles  to  marrying. 
The  monogamic  system  condemns  millions  of  women 
to  celibacy.  A  large  proportion  of  them  stray  from 
the  path  of  right,  and  these  unfortunates  induce  mil- 
lions of  men  to  forego  marriage.  As  I  have  said,  vir- 
tue and  chastity  wither  under  the  monogamic  system. 
There  are  no  illegitimate  children  in  Utah;  there 
are  no  libertines;  there  are  no  brothels,  excepting 
where  the  presence  of  Gentiles  creates  the  demand  for 
them.  Even  then  our  people  do  what  they  can  to  root 
out  such  places.  There  is  a  positive  advantage  in  hav- 
ing more  than  one  wife.  It  is  impossible  to  find  a 
Gentile  home,  where  comforts  and  plenty  prevail,  in 
which  there  is  only  one  woman.  No  one  woman  can 
manage  a  household.  She  must  have  assistance. 
Hence  we  claim  that  when  a  man  marries  a  second 
wife,  he  actually  benefits  the  first  one,  and  contrib- 
utes to  her  ease,  and  relieves  her  of  a  large  burden  of 
care.  The  duties  of  the  houeshold  are  divided  be- 
tween the  two  women,  and  everything  moves  on  har- 
moniously and  peacefully.  The  whole  thing  is  a  mat- 
ter of  education.  A  girl  reared  under  the  monogamic 
system  may  look  with  abhorrence  on  ours;  our  young 
women  do  not  do  so  They  expect,  when  they  marry 
a  man,  that  he  will  some  day    take  another    wife,  and 


POLYGAMY  423 

they  consider  it  quite  natural  that  he  should  do  so. 
In  wealthy  Gentile  communities  the  concubine  system 
largely  takes  the  place  of  the  polygamous  system. 
Any  man  of  intelligence,  observation  and  travel,  knows 
that  such  is  the  case.  The  fact  is  ignored  by  general 
consent,  and  little  is  said  about  it  and  nothing  is 
written  about  it.  It  is  not  regarded  as  a  proper  subject 
of  conversation  or  of  publication.  How  much  better 
to  give  lonely  women  a  home  while  they  are  uncon- 
taminated,  and  honor  them  with  your  name,  and  per- 
petually provide  for  them,  and  before  the  world  rec- 
ognize your  own  offspring!  The  polygamous  system 
is  the  only  natural  one,  and  the  time  rapidly  approaches 
when  it  will  be  the  most  conspicuous  and  beneficent 
of  American  institutions.  It  will  be  the  grand  charac- 
teristic feature  of  American  society.  Our  women  are 
contented  with  it — more,  they  are  the  most  ardent 
defenders  of  it  to  be  found  in  Utah.  If  the  question 
were  put  to  a  vote  to-morrow,  nine-tenths  of  the  wo- 
men of  Utah   would  vote  to  perpetuate  polygamy. 

In  line  with  other  Christian  sects  Mormons  claim 
that  polygamy  is  countenanced  by  the  New  Testament 
as  well  as  by  the  Old.  They  interpret  Paul's  teach- 
ing in  regard  to  bishops,  while  commanding  them 
to  marry  one  wife,  as  also  not  prohibiting  them 
from  marrying  more  than  one;  their  interpret- 
ation of  this  passage  but  slightly  varying  from 
that  of  Rev.  Mr.  Madan.  Rev.  C.  P.  Lyford,  of 
the  Methodist  church,  long  a  resident  of  Utah, 
does  not  fail  to  see  the  degradation  of  the  people  as 
in  proportion  to  the  despotism  of  the  hierarchy.  He 
says. 

It  took  the  Methodist  church  forty  years  to  get  a 
membership  of  38,000.  Mormonism  in  forty-four 
years  counted  250,000.  It  seems  incredible,  neverthe- 
less it  is  a  fact.  In  this  brief  space  of  time  it  has  also 
been  able  to  nullify  our  laws,  oppose  our  institutions, 
openly  perpetrate  crimes,  be  represented  in  Congress, 
boast  of  the  helplessness  of  the  nation  to  prevent  these 


424  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

things,  and  give  the  church  supremacy  over  the  state 
and  the  people  Bills  introduced  in  Congress  ade- 
quate to  their  overthrow  have  been  year  after  year 
allowed  to  fall  to  the  ground  without  action  upon  them. 

Our  public  men  can  only  pronounce  against  the 
crime  of  polygamy;  the  press  can  see  only  polygamy 
in  Utah ;  the  public  mind  is  impressed  with  only  the 
heinousness  of  polygamy.  Back  of  polyagmy  is  the 
tree  that  produces  it  and  many  kindred  evils  more 
dear  to  the  Mormon  rulers.  They  do  not  care  for  all 
the  sentiment  or  law  against  this  one  fruit  of  the  tree, 
if  the  tree  itself  is  left  to  stand.  The  tree — the  pro- 
lific cause  of  so  many  and  so  great  evils  in  Utah,  the 
greatest  curse  of  the  territory,  the  strength  of  Mor- 
monism,  and  its  impregnable  wall  of  defense  against 
Christianity  and  civilization,  is  that  arbitrary,  des- 
potic, and  absolute  hierarchy  known  as  the  Mormon 
Priesthood. 

Mr.  Lyford  has  partial  insight  into  the  truth  when 
he  says  "back  of  polygamy  is  the  tree  that  produces 
it  and  many  kindred  evils;"  but  in  denning  that  tree 
as  the  hierarchy — the  priesthood— he  has  not  reached 
the  entire  truth.  He  does  not  touch  the  ground  which 
supports  the  tree.  Polygamy  is  but  one  development 
of  the  doctrine  of  woman's  created  inferiority,  the  con- 
stant tendency  of  which  is  to  make  her  a  mere  slave 
under  every  form  of  religion  extant,  and  of  which  the 
complex  marriage  of  the  Christian  sect  of  Perfectionists 
at  Oneida  Community  was  but  another  logical  result. 

When  woman  interprets  the  Bible  for  herself,  it  will 
be  in  the  interest  of  a  higher  morality,  a  purer  home. 
Monogamy  is  woman's  doctrine,  as  polygamy  is  man's. 
Backofen,  the  Swiss  jurist,  says  that  the  regulation 
of  marriage  by  which,  in  primitive  times,  it  became 
possible  for  a  woman  to  belong  only  to  one  man, 
came  about  by  a  religious  reformation,  wherein  the 
women  in  armed  conflict,  obtained  a   victory  overmen. 


POLYGAMY  425 

While  the  greatest  number  of  converts  to  the  Mor- 
mon church  are  from  among  the  ignorant  peasantry 
of  foreign  countries,  still  no  less  than  in  orthodox 
Christianity  do  we  find  people  of  culture  and  educa- 
tion upholding  its  doctrines,  an  irrefragable  proof  that 
the  power  of  religious  despotism  lies  in  two  condi- 
tions; First,  ignorance;  Second,  fear.  To  fear  must 
ever  be  attributed  the  great  victories  of  religious  des- 
potism. Fear  of  punishment  after  death  from  which 
obedience  to  priestly  teaching  is  believed  to  free. 
Such  slavery  of  the  human  mind  has  ever  been  the 
greatest  obstacle  to  advancing  civilization.  Men  and 
women  of  the  Christian  church  not  daring  to  use  their 
own  free  thought  upon  such  questions,  are  no  less 
bound  than  the  savage,  who  makes  a  hideous  noise 
in  order  to  frighten  away  the  monster  he  thinks  try- 
ing to  swallow  the  sun  during  an  eclipse. 

The  strength  of  the  church  has  ever  lain  in  its  power 
of  producing  fear  and  impelling  belief  in  its  assertion 
that  the  priesthood  alone  can  define  the  will  of  God, 
and  that  as  His  chosen  servants  they  but  voice  His 
will  in  every  word  they  utter.  Unhesitating  belief  in 
this  assertion  has  been  required  through  the  Christian 
ages  as  evidence  of  a  true  son  or  daughter  of  the  church, 
while  the  cry  of  heresy,  so  frightful  in  its  significance, 
so  terrible  in  its  punishment  under  the  priesthood, 
has  most  effectively  prevented  investigation  and 
quenched  the  fire  of  rebellious  thought. 

The  Mormon  priesthood  look  toward  the  establish- 
ment of  a  temporal  kingdom  in  connection  with  their 
religion.  They  maintain  that  the  civil  power  inher- 
ently belongs  to  the  theocracy  and  should  supersede 
all  other  forms  of  government.  Like  the  priesthood 
of  other  sects  they  claim    divine 'guidance  in    the  pro- 


426  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

mulgation  of  their  laws  as  proceeding  from  above 
while  those  of  the  state  emanate  from  man  himself 
and  consequently  are  not  binding  upon  the  conscience, 
rhe  church  as  a  body  ever  claiming  to  hold  the  keys 
of  heaven  and  of  hell;  and  the  implicit  belief  given 
to  such  assertion  by  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands, 
nas  ever  been  a  most  powerful  method  for  subduing 
the  reason.  Its  anathemas,  its  excommunications,  its 
denial  of  church  rites  in  marriage,  in  burial,  its  con- 
trol of  both  temporal  and  spiritual  power,  have  ever 
made  its  weapons  of  the  most  formidable  character. 
Fear  of  what  may  be  met  in  a  future  life  over  which 
the  church  assumes  such  knowledge  and  control,  sub- 
jugation of  the  reason,  the  fostering  of  ignorance, 
the  denial  of  education  and  the  constant  teaching  that 
thought  outside  of  the  line  formulated  by  the  church 
is  deepest  sin,  has  held  the  christian  world  in  bond- 
age during  its  centuries.  Inasmuch  as  it  is  impossi- 
ble for  the  candid  thinker  not  to  perceive  that  all 
forms  of  Christianity  are  based  upon  the  statement 
that  woman  having  brought  sin  into  the  world  rend- 
ered the  sacrifice  of  a  Saviour  necessary,  the  reason  of 
such  persistent  effort  upon  the  part  of  the  church  for 
woman's  entire  subjugation  becomes  apparent.  It  is 
assumed  by  all  theocracies  that  the  church  is  a  tem- 
poral kingdom,  with  supreme  right  to  the  control  of 
all  civil  affairs.  Every  theocracy  is  therefore  a  polit- 
ical system  seeking  control  of  the  civil  government  and 
however  greatly  suppressed  in  action,  every  theocracy 
proposes  such  control  as  its  ulterior  design.  Early  in 
1890,  an  encyclical  letter  by  the  pope  declared  the 
supremacy  of  the  church  over  the  state,  commanding 
resistance  to  the  authority  of  the  state  in  case  of  its 
conflicting  with  the  pretensions  of  the  Supreme  Pontiff 


POLYGAMY  427 

of  the  Catholic  church.   The  Mormon  theocracy  and  the 
Catholic  here  show  their  affinity.   Nor  are  Protestants 
without  similar  pretensions  as  is  proven  by  the  action 
of  the  "National    Reform    Association"  of    the  United 
States;   whose  aim    is  the    union  of    church  and    state 
through  an    amendment  to    the  Federal    constitution, 
its  ultimate  purpose  being  that    of  theocratic    control 
over  the  civil  government  of  this  country.     These  va- 
rious bodies  are  parts  of   the  "Christian  Party    in  Po- 
litics;" nor  is  this  party  of  recent  origin;  as  early  as 
1827-8  when  composed  almost  entirely  of  Protestants, 
its  designs  upon  the  life  of  the  republic  were  noted  by 
the  eloquent  Scotch  reformer,  Frances    Wright,  dur- 
ing her  travels,  lectures    and  residence  in  this  coun- 
try.     Mormonism  and  Catholicism  do  not  more  greatly 
threaten   the  civil  and    religious    integrity    of  this  re- 
public than  does  the  "National    Reform  Association," 
the   theocracy    of   the  Protestant  church    equally  with 
that  of  the  Catholic  church  constantly  striving  to  incite 
congressional  action  in  favor    of    obligatory    religious 
teaching  and  seeking  control  of  the    common  schools. 
Yet  the  history  of  the  world  proves  that  wherever  tried, 
ecclesiastical  schools  have  lowered  the  standard  of  ed- 
ucation.  To-day  the  schools  under  control  of  the  Mor- 
mon church  in  no  respect  equal  those  of    adjacent  ter- 
ritories.     Under    the    plea    of    religious    freedom    the 
greatest  dangers  arise.     While    the  Mormons  affirm  in 
reference  to  polygamy  that  their  church    laws  concern 
Mormons  alone,  no  less  do  other  theocracies  inculcate 
doctrines  contrary  to   civil  law;  the    catholic   church, 
its     spirit    to-day12    the    same    as    during    past    ages, 

12.  In  a  recent  Catholic  Allocution,  emanating  from  the  dignitaries  of  that 
church  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  it  was  said:  "The  church,  like  Christ,  is  the  same 
yesterday,  to-day  and  forever;  it  is  the  same  here  as  in  other  parts  of  the  world; 
its  sacred  laws,  enacted  under  the  guidance  of  the  divine  spirit,  are  as  binding 
here  as  in  any  other  place." 


428  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

making  civil  marriage  and  the  public  school  system 
its  present  objective  points  of  opposition  to  the 
state"; while  the  general  body  of  protestant  churches 
more  openly  than  the  catholic  churches  proclaim  their 
intention  not  alone  to  control  secular  education,  mar- 
riage and  divorce,  but  to  unite  church  and  state 
through  a  change  in  the  fundamental  law  of  the  United 
States.  A  somewhat  wide-spread  fear  exists  in  regard 
to  the  encroachment  of  Catholicism  upon  civil  liberty. 
The  most  potent  danger  lies  elsewhere,  the  most  po- 
tent because  the  least  perceived;  the  most  potent  be- 
cause arising  from  a  body  whom  the  masses  of  native 
Americans,  through  heredity  and  training,  look  upon 
as  supporters  and  defenders  of  both  civil  and  religious 
liberty — the  priesthood  of  the  orthodox  Protestant 
churches.  Mormonism  does  not  so  fully  threaten  civil 
and  religious  liberty;  Catholicism  is  not  making 
greater  encroachments  upon  them  than  are  the  great 
body  of  the  protestant  clergy,  under  the  name  and 
the  work  of  the  "National  Reform  Association." 

The  people  of  the  United  States  with  careless  se- 
curity in  the  power  of  the  principles  of  freedom  upon 
which  the  government  is  based,  fail  to  note  the  theo- 
cratic   encroachment     everywhere    threatened.14     The 

13.  We  do  not,  indeed,  prize  as  highly  as  some  of  our  countrymen  appear  to  do 
the  ability  to  read,  write  and  cipher.  Some  men  are  born  to  be  leaders,  and  the 
rest  are  born  to  be  led.  The  best  ordered  and  administered  state  is  that  in  which 
the  few  are  well  educated  and  lead,  and  the  many  are  trained  to  obedience. — 
"  Catholic  Review." 

14.  The  Mormon  faith  belts  Idaho,  Montana,  Arizona,  New  Mexico,  Nevada; 
Utah  and  Wyoming,  a  portion  of  the  country  that  is  wealthier  than  any  other  por- 
tion in  its  natural  products.  It  is  not  simply  in  Utah  that  this  power  of  Mor" 
monism  is  found,  but  it  is  spreading  in  every  territory.  Every  railroad  in  that 
section  is  partially  built  by  Mormon  laborers.  They  are  spreading  all  over  that 
country.  They  control,  in  three  or  four  states  there,  the  balance  of  power.  They 
control  every  election  that  is  held  in  Utah,  and  every  man  is  dictated  to  in  rela- 
tion to  his  vote.  They  also  control  the  ballot-box  in  Idaho  and  Wyoming,  and  are 
thus  liable  in  time  to  come,  should  the  two  Mormon  territories  become  states,  to 


POLYGAMY  429 

very  nature  of  sacerdotalism  professing  as  it  every 
where  does,  to  hold  authority  of  a  supernatural  char- 
acter, unfailingly  creates  a  claim  of  supremacy  over 
civil  government.  President  John  Taylor,  of  the  Mor- 
mon church,  a  few  years  since  openly  asserted  these 
claims,  saying:  "We  are  independent  of  newspapers, 
independent  of  kings,  independent  of  governments." 
But  it  is  not  the  Mormon  priesthood  alone  that  declares 
its  independence  of  secular  governments.  This  is  the 
same  spirit  that  seen  through  the  ages  of  Christianity 
has  been  so  plainly  shown  by  Catholicism  since  the 
temporal  power  in  Italy  has  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a 
secular  monarch,  and  that  is  now  so  fully  a  part  of  Pro- 
testant effort.  Under  the  overwhelming  amount  of 
biblical  proof  quoted  in  its  favor  by  the  most  eminent 
legal  and  clerical  minds  of  the  christian  church  we 
must  admit  the  doctrine  of  polygamy  to  be  a  compo- 
nent part  of  Christianity.  Although  like  the  fagot 
and  the  stake,  under  the  light  of  advancing  civiliza- 
tion it  has  somewhat  fallen  into  disrepute  with  the 
majority  of  men  and  women,  yet  its  renewal  as  an 
underlying  principle  of  a  new  christian  sect  need  not 
be  a  subject  of  astonishment.  The  pulpit,  the  bar, 
and  legislative  halls  are  still  under  the  control  of  man 
and  these  institutions  still  express  the  form  of  civili- 
zation that  is  due  to  his  teachings.  But  as  neither 
moral  nor  intellectual  education  is  of  value  unless 
founded  upon  a  material  basis,  the  world  now  begin- 
ning to  see  that  Wall  Street,  and  the  Bourse,  with 
their  fingers  upon  the   business  of   the  world,    are  fast 

throw  sixteen  Senators  into  our  Congress.  They  openly  boast  of  their  intention 
to  take  their  plural  system  to  your  watering  places  here  in  the  east,  Saratoga, 
Newport  and  other  resorts.  I  realize  the  struggle  of  the  past  when  the  manhood 
of  our  nation  was  put  to  the  test,  and  I  know  there  is  another  contest  approach- 
ing. The  leaders  say  they  intend  to  fight  this  contest  until  Mormonism  prevails 
—Mormonism  and  treason  to  the  United  States  Government. 


43°  WOMAN,     CHURCH    AND    STATE 

becoming  of  greater  importance  in  determining  the 
future  character  of  civilization  than  St.  Peters,  the 
Kremlin,  or  Westminster  Abbey.  Wendell  Phillips 
once  declared  that  the  advance  of  civilization  was  not 
dependent  upon  either  the  pulpit  or  the  press  but  up- 
on commerce,  and  a  careful  study  of  the  inventions 
and  industries  of  the  age,  confirm  this  statement.  Ma- 
terial needs,  underlying  all  others,  direct  the  tenor  of 
modern  civilization.  But  commerce  of  itself  is  not 
alone  responsible.  Within  the  past  thirty  years  a  new 
element  has  widely  entered  into  the  business  of  the 
world,  and  even  the  most  careless  observer  can  but 
in  many  ways  note  the  changing  customs  and  habits  of 
business  life,  and  that  under  this  change,  a  new  form 
of  civilization  is  dawning  upon  the  world.  Woman 
once  so  carefully  excluded  is  now  everywhere  seen. 
At  the  counter,  behind  the  cashier's  desk,  as  buyer, 
as  business  manager,  and  in  many  instances  as  em- 
ployer, conducting  business  for  herself.  Every  kind 
of  industry  is  opening  to  her,  from  that  of  government 
employee  at  Washington  with  the  financial  interests 
of  the  nation  in  her  grasp,  to  that  of  electrical  busi- 
ness, woman  is  everywhere  found.  The  commerce  of 
the  world  is  rapidly  changing  hands  and  the  next 
quarter  of  a  century  will  find  woman  in  its  full  con- 
trol. But  few  persons  foresee  the  ultimate  result  of 
this  change.  With  a  new  class  at  the  helm,  com- 
merce will  give  new  ideas  to  the  world.  If  Chris- 
tianity survive  the  shock  of  coming  events,  it  will  pre- 
sent a  different  aspect  within  the  next  fifty  years  and 
its  teachings  in  regard  to  woman  will  be  totally  un- 
like those  of  past  ages.  As  woman  comes  into  new 
relations  with  the  great  institutions  of  the  world,  she 
will  cease  to  believe    herself  inferior    and  subordinate 


POLYGAMY  43I 

to  man.   Polygamy  and  all  kindred  degradations  of  her 
sex  will  become  things  of  the  past,  and  taking  her  right 
ful  place  in  church  and    state  she    will    open    a    new 
civilization  to  the  world. 


CHAPTER  VIIL 

WOMAN  AND  WORK. 

And  unto  Adam  the  Lord  said;  "Cursed  be  the 
ground  for  thy  sake;  in  sorrow  shalt  thou  eat  of  it  all 
the  days  of  thy  life;  thorns  and  thistles  shall  it  bring 
forth  to  thee;  and  thou  shalt  eat  the  herbs  of  the 
field;  in  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread,  till 
thou  return  unto  the  ground,  for  dust  thou  art  and  in- 
to dust  thou  shalt  return.     Gen.  3:  17-18-19. 

Upon  man  was  pronounced  the  curse  of  the  world's 
work.  The  Bible  declares  it  was  because  of  his  sin- 
fulness that  the  earth  was  to  be  cursed;  for  his  punish- 
ment that  he  was  to  eat  of  it  in  sorrow  all  the  days  of 
his  life;  because  of  his  wickedness  that  it  was  to  bear 
thorns  and  thistles;  and  in  consequence  of  his  disobe- 
dience that  he  was  to  eat  the  herb  of  the  field  in  the 
sweat  of  his  face  until  he  returned  unto  the  ground 
from  whence  he  came.  No  curse  of  work  was  pro- 
nounced upon  woman;  her  "curse'  was  of  an  entirely 
different  character.  It  was  a  positive  command  of  the 
Lord  God  Almighty,  that  upon  man  alone  the  work  of 
the  world  should  fall  and  this  work  he  was  to  perform 
in  sorrow  and  the  sweat  of  his  brow. 

Thus  far  this  book  has  been  devoted  to  a  consider- 
ation of  the  doctrines  taught  by  christian  men  in  re- 
gard to  "woman's  curse,"  and  so  earnestly  has  trr.s 
doctrine  been  proclaimed  that  man  seems  to  have  en- 
tirely forgotten  the  "curse,"  also  pronounced  upon  him- 
self or  if  he  has  not  forgotten,  he  has  neglected  to  see  its 

432 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  433 

full  import,  and  ;n  his  anxiety  to  keep  woman  in  sub- 
ordination he  has  placed  his  "curse"  also  upon  her 
thus  thwarting  the  express  command  of  God.  It  is 
therefore  but  just  to  now  devote  a  few  pages  to  the 
consideration  of  man's  "curse"  and  an  investigation  of 
the  spirit  in  which  he  has  accepted  the  penalty  im- 
posed upon  him  for  his  share  in  the  transgression 
which  cost  him  Paradise.  At  *he  commencement  of 
this  investigation,  it  will  be  well  to  remember  that 
Eve  was  not  banished  from  the  Garden  of  Eden. 
Adam  alone  was  cast  out  and  to  prohibit  his  re-en- 
trance, not  hers,  the  angel  with  the  flaming  sword  was 
set  as  guardian  at  its  gates. 

We  must  also  recall  the  opposition  of  the  church 
through  the  ages  to  all  attempts  made  towards  the 
amelioration  of  woman's  suffering  at  time  of  her  bring- 
ing forth  children,  upon  the  plea  that  such  mitigation 
was  a  direct  interference  with  the  mandate  of  the 
Almighty  and  an  inexcusable  sin.  It  will  be  recalled 
that  in  the  chapter  upon  witchcraft,  the  bitter  hostil- 
ity of  the  church  to  the  use  of  anaesthetics  by  the 
women  physicians  of  that  period  was  shown,  and  its 
opposing  sermons,  its  charges  of  heresy,  its  burnings 
at  the  stake  as  methods  of  enforcing  that  opposition. 
Man,  ever  unjust  to  woman,  has  been  no  less  so  in 
the  field  of  work.  He  has  not  taken  upon  himself  the 
entire  work  of  the  world,  as  commanded,  but  has  ever 
imposed  a  large  portion  of  it  upon  woman.  Neither 
do  all  men  labor;  but  thousands  in  idleness  evade  the 
"curse"  of  work  pronounced  upon  all  men  alike.  The 
church  in  its  teachings  and  through  its  non-preaching 
the  duty  of  man  in  this  respect,  is  guilty  of  that  defiance 
of  the  Lord  God  it  has  ever  been  so  ready  to  attribute 
to  woman.     The    pulpit  does  not    proclaim  that   this 


434  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

curse  of  work  rests  upon  any  man;  does  not  preach 
this  command  to  the  idle,  the  profligate,  the  rich 
or  the  honored  but  on  the  contrary  shows  less 
sympathy  and  less  respect  for  the  laborer,  than 
for  the  idle  man.  The  influence  of  this  neglect  of  its 
duty  by  the  church  has  permeated  the  christian 
world,  we  everywhere  find  contempt  for  the  man  who 
amid  thorns  and  thistles  tills  the  ground,  obeying  his 
primal  "curse''  of  earning  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of 
his  brow;  and  everywhere  see  respect  accorded  to  the 
man,  who  by  whatever  means  of  honest  or  of  dishon- 
est capacity  evades  bis  curse,  taking  no  share  in  the 
labors  of  tne  field,  nor  earning  his  bread  in  the  sweat 
of  his  brow. 

Anaesthetics  have  justly  been  called  the  greatest 
boon  ever  conferred  by  science  upon  mankind.  But 
after  the  persecution  of  the  witchcraft  period  a  knowl- 
edge of  their  use  was  lost  to  the  world  for  many 
hundred  years,  but  when  rediscovered  during  the  present 
century,  their  employment  in  mitigating  the  sufferings 
of  the  expectant  mother,  again  met  with  the  same 
opposition  as  during  the  middle  ages  upon  the  sam% 
ground  of  its  interference  with  "the  curse"  pronounc- 
ed by  God  upon  woman.  The  question  of  their  use 
at  such  time  was  violently  discussed  at  ministerial 
gatherings,  and  when  Sir  James  Simpson,  physician  to 
Queen  Victoria,  employed  them  at  the  birth  of  the 
later  princes  and  princesses  he  was  assailed  by  pulpit 
and  press  as  having  sacrilegiously  thwarted  "the curse." 
When  the  practice  was  introduced  into  the  United 
States,  prominent  New  England  clergymen  preached 
against  their  use  upon  the  same  ground,  of  its  being 
an  impious  frustration  of  the  curse  of  the  Almighty 
upon    woman.     But    the    history  of  Christendom  does 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  435 

not  show  an  instance  in  which  the  church  or  the  pulpit 
ever  opposed  labor  by  woman,  upon  the  ground  of  its 
being  an  interference  with  the  "curse"  pronounced 
upon  man,  but  on  the  contrary  her  duty  to  labor  has 
been  taught  by  church  and  state  alike,  having  met  no 
opposition,  unless,  perchance  she  has  entered  upon 
some  remunerative  employment  theretofore  monopo- 
lized by  man,  with  the  purpose  of  applying  its  pro- 
ceeds to  her  own  individual  use.  Nor  has  objection 
then  arisen  because  of  the  work,  but  solely  because  of 
its  money-earning  qualities.  An  investigation  of  the 
laws  concerning  woman,  their  origin,  growth,  and  by 
whom  chiefly  sustained,  will  enable  us  to  judge  how 
far  they  are  founded  upon  the  eternal  principles  of 
justice  and  how  far  emanating  from  ignorance,  su- 
perstition and  love  of  power  which  is  the  basis  of  all 
despotism.  Viewing  her  through  the  Christian  Ages, 
we  find  woman  has  chiefly  been  regarded  as  an  ele- 
ment of  wealth;  the  labor  of  wife1  and  daughters,  the 
sale  of  the  latter  in  the  prostitution  of  a  loveless  mar- 
riage, having  been  an  universally  extended  form  of 
domestic  slavery,  one  which  the  latest  court  decisions 
recognize  as  still  extant.  It  is  the  boast  of  America 
and  Europe  that  woman  holds  a  higher  position  in 
the  world  of  work  under  Christianity  than  under  pa- 
gandom. Heathen  treatment  of  women  in  this  respect 
often  forms  the  subject  of  returned  missionary  sermons 
from  men  apparently  forgetful  that  servile  labor  of  the 
severest  and  most  degrading  character  is  performed  by 
christian  women,  is  demanded  from  them  in  every 
christian  country,  Catholic,  Greek,  and  Protestant 
alike,  many  savage  and  barbarous  races  showing  superi- 
ority over  christian  lands  in  their  general  treatment  of 
women. 

I.    See  Decision  of  New  York  Court  of  Appeals  1892,  page  463-4. 


43&  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

England  claiming  to  represent  the  highest  result  of 
christian  civilization  shows  girls  of  the  most  tender 
years  and  married  women  with  infants  at  the  breast 
working  in  the  depths  of  coal  mines  nearly  naked,  where 
harnessed  to  trucks  they  drag  loads  of  coal  on  their 
hands  and  knees  through  long  low  galleries  to  the  pit 
mouth.  Among  the  pit-women  in  England  are  those  to 
whom  Christianity  is  not  even  a  name;  one  to  whom  the 
word  Christ  was  spoken,  asking  "who's  him;  be 
he  a  hodman  or  a  pitman?"  It  has  been  truthfully 
declared  that  England  protects  its  hunting  dogs  kept 
for  their  master's  pleasure,  far  better  than  it  protects 
the  women  and  children  of  its  working  classes.  It 
takes  about  $2,500,000  annually  to  pay  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  20,000  hounds  owned  in  Great  Britain, 
while  women  and  children  are  left  to  slowly  die  at 
starvation  wages.  A  few  years  since  a  commission 
was  instituted  by  Parliament  to  inquire  into  the  con- 
dition of  women  working  in  the  coal  mines  and  the 
wages  paid  them.  The  facts  ascertained  were  of  the 
most  horrible  character,  no  improvement  being  shown 
in  the  past  fifty  years,  men  and  women,  boys  and  girls, 
still  working  together  in   an  almost    naked  condition. 

"In  the  Lancashire  coal-fields  lying  to  the  north  and 
west  of  Manchester,  females  are  regularly  employed 
in  underground  labor,  and  the  brutal  conduct  of  the 
men  and  the  debasement  of  the  women  are  well  de- 
scribed by  some  of  the  witnesses  examined  by  them. 
Betty  Harris,  (one  of  numerous  persons  examined), 
aged  thirty-seven,  drawer  in  a  coal  pit,  said:  "I  have 
a  belt  around  my  waist  and  a  chain  between  my  legs 
to  the  truck,  and  I  go  on  my  hands  and  feet ;  the  read 
is  very  steep  and  we  have  to  hold  by  a  rope,  and  when 
there  is  no  rope,  by  anything  we  can  catch  hold  of. 
There  are  six  women  and  about  six  boys  or  girls  in 
the  pit  I  work  in;    it  is  very  wet,  and  the  water  comes 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  437 

over  our  clog-tops  always,  and  I  have  seen  it  up  to 
my  thighs ;  my  clothes  are  always  wet."  Patience 
Keershaw  aged  seventeen,  another  examined,  said:  "I 
work  in  the  clothes  I  now  have  on  (trousers  and  rag- 
ged jacket ;)  the  bald  place  upon  my  head  is  made  by 
thrusting  the  cones;  the  getters  I  work  for  are  naked, 
except  their  caps;  they  pull  off  their  clothes;  all  the 
men  are  naked."  Margaret  Hibbs,  aged  eighteen,  said: 
"My  employment  after  reaching  the  wall-face  is  to  fill 
my  bagie  or  stype  with  two  and  a  half  or  three  hun- 
dred weight  of  coal;  I  then  hook  it  on  to  my  chain 
and  drag  it  through  the  seam,  which  is  from  twenty- 
six  to  twenty-eight  inches  high,  till  I  get  to  the  main 
road,  a  good  distance,  probably  two  hundred  to  400 
yards;  the  pavement  I  drag  over  is  wet,  and  I  am 
obliged  at  all  times  to  crawl  on  my  hands  and  feet 
with  my  bagie  hung  to  the  chain  and  ropes.  It  is  sad, 
sweating,  sore  and  fatiguing  work,  and  frequently 
maims  the  women."  Robert  Bald,  the  government 
coal-viewer,  states,  that  "In  surveying  the  workings 
of  an  extensive  colliery  under  ground,  a  married  wo- 
man came  forward  groaning  under  an  excessive  weight 
of  coals,  trembling  in  every  nerve,  and  almost  unable 
to  keep  her  knees  from  sinking  under  her.  Oncoming 
up  she  said,  in  a  plaintive  and  melancholy  voice,  "Oh 
sir,  this  is  sore,  sore,  sore  work. "  A  sub-commissioner 
said:  "It  is  almost  incredible  that  human  beings  can 
submit  to  such  employment — crawling  on  hands  and 
knees  harnessed  like  horses,  over  soft,  slushy  floors, 
more  difficult  than  dragging  the  same  weight  through 
our  lowest  sewers  "  Hundreds  of  pages  are  filled  with 
testimony  of  the  same  revolting  character.  These  mis- 
erable human  beings  are  paid  less  than  twenty  cents 
per  day.  The  evidence  shows  almost  as  terrible  a  con- 
dition of  the  employes  of  the  workshops  and  large 
manufacturing  establishments. 

For  the  same  kind  of  work  men  are  paid  three  times 
more  wages  than  are  paid  to  women. 

Women  in  the  iron  trade  of  the  Midlands  are  com- 
pelled, according    to  a    labor   commission    witness,  to 


438  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

work  in  the  sheds  scantily  covered  and  in  the  summer 
have  to  divest  themselves  of  nearly  all  their  clothing 
while  hammering  nuts  and  bolts.  They  bring  their 
children  to  the  factories  and  cover  them  up  to  prevent 
their  being  burnt  by  red-hot  sparks.  Often  they  have 
to  carry  bundles  of  iron  weighing  half  a  hundred 
weight.  For  such  work  they  earn  4s.  or  5s.  a  week, 
while  the  men  make  about  14  s. 

As  early  as  1840  an  inquiry  into  the  mining  affairs  of 
Great  Britain,  while  showing  a  pitiable  condition  of 
the  male  laborers,  exhibited  that  of  women  and  chil- 
dren in  a  much  worse  light.  As  the  natural  guardians 
of  children,  well  aware  of  their  immaturity  of  body  and 
mind,  no  mother  allows  their  employment  in  severe 
labor  at  a  tender  age  unless  herself  compelled  to  such 
work  and  unable  to  save  her  children.  But  at  this 
investigation,  men,  women  and  children  were  found 
working  together  in  the  pits  all  either  nude  or  nearly 
so,  and  according  to  the  Report,  not  seeing  daylight 
for  weeks  at  a  time.  Women  soon  to  become  mothers 
were  found  yoked  to  carts  in  the  pits;  girls  carried 
baskets  of  coal  on  their  backs  up  ladders;  while  mere 
children  crawling  like  dogs,  on  hands  and  feet,  hauled 
carts  along  narrow  rails,  the  system  in  operation  re- 
quiring these  victims  to  remain  underground  for  weeks 
at  a  time,  breathing  foul  air  and  deprived  of  the  light 
of  day.  The  spirit  of  ambition  is  not  dead  among  these 
wretched  serfs,  these  women  working  out  man's  "curse." 
The  most  degraded  woman  in  the  English  coal  mine 
will  fight  for  precedence.  She  has  all  the  force 
of  the  man  by  her  side  whose  religious  equal  she  is 
not;  whose  political  equal  she  is  not;  he  possessing 
those  elements  of  power,  entrance  to  the  priesthood 
and  use  of  the  ballot,denied  to  her.  Through  the  ballot 
he  receives  higher  wages  for  the  same  kind  and  amount 
of  work,the  church  having  taught  his  superior  rights  upon 


WOMAN   AND  WORK  439 

every  point;  through  the  ballot  he  influences  the  action 
of  government  in  his  own  favor  to  the  injury  of  his  fel- 
low work-woman.  A  few  years  since  the  male  miners 
petitioned  against  the  employment  of  women  in  the 
mines,  when  a  clause  to  that  effect  was  immediately 
introduced  to  the  Coal  Mine  Bill,  then  before  Parlia- 
ment, although  in  the  Lancashire  districts  where  one 
hundred  and  sixty -four  women  were  employed,  all  but 
twenty-six  were  widows  or  single  women  entirety  de- 
pendent upon  their  own  earnings.  As  severe  as  the 
work,  the  women  were  remarkable  for  their  bright  and 
healthful  appearance  as  contrasted  with  the  woman 
workers  in  the  factories  of  Great  Britain.  Man,  hered- 
itarily unjust  to  woman  under  the  principles  of  the 
Patriarchate  and  the  lessons  of  Christianity,  is  even 
more  unjust  in  the  fields  of  work  he  has  compelled 
her  to  enter,  than  in  those  of  education  and  the  ballot 
which  she  is  seeking  for  herself.  Organizations,  strikes, 
the  eight  hour  law  demand,  are  largely  conducted  by 
men  for  men.  The  grim  humor  originating  the  proverb 
"a  man's  work  is  from  sun  to  sun,  a  woman's  work  is 
never  done,"  still  clings  with  all  its  old  force  to  wo- 
men in  most  employments.  To  such  small  extent  has 
man  made  the  woman  worker's  cause  his  own,  that  in- 
stances are  to  be  found  even  in  the  United  States, 
where  men  and  women  working  together  and  together 
going  out  upon  a  strike,  the  men  have  been  reinstated 
at  the  increase  demanded,  the  women  forced  to  return 
at  the  old  wages.  Nor  is  our  own  country  the  chief 
sinner  in  this  respect.  It  was  found  imperative  many 
years  since,  among  the  women  of  England  to  organize 
leagues  of  their  own  sex  alone,  if  they  desired  their  own 
interest  in  labor  to  be  protected;  the  male  Trades  Unions 
of  that  country  excluding  women  from  some  of  the  best 


44°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

paid  branches  of  industry,  as  carpet  making,  cloth 
weaving,  letter  press  printing.2  In  self  defense, 
the  Woman's  Protective  and  Provident  League,  and  a 
"Woman's  Union  Labor  Journal"  were  founded.  The 
principle  of  exclusion  has  not  alone  been  shown  against 
woman's  entrance  into  well  paid  branches  of  work, 
but  in  those  they  have  been  permitted  to  enter  they 
have  found  themselves  subjected  to  much  petty  annoy 
ance.  Among  the  male  painters  of  pottery  a  combina- 
tion was  formed  to  prevent  the  use  by  woman  of  the 
arm-rests  required  in  this  work.  Tram-way  trains 
carry  London  workmen  at  reduced  rates,  but  a  com- 
bination was  entered  into  by  male  laborers  to  prevent 
women  workers  from  using  the  low-priced  trains.  Nor 
in  many  instances  are  employers  less  the  enemies  of 
women,  unions  having  been  found  necessary  for  the 
purpose  of  moral  protection.  A  most  deplorable  evi- 
dence of  the  low  respect  in  which  woman  is  held  and 
the  slavery  that  work  and  cheap  wages  mean  for  her, 
is  the  suggestion  often  made  by  employers  that  she 
shall  supplement  her  wages  by  the  sale  of  her  body. 
The  manager  of  an  industrial  league  in  New  York  City 
a  few  years  since  found  that  no  young  girl  escaped 
such  temptation.  Neither  exteme  youth  nor  friendli- 
ness afforded  security  or  protection  but  were  rather 
additional  inducements  for  betrayal,  most  of  the  vic- 
tims numbering  but  fourteen  short  years.  The  late 
Jennie  Collins,  of    Boston,  one  of   the  earliest  persons 

a.  During  the  Parliament  Commission  inquiry,  a  witness,  Peter  Garkel,  collier, 
said  that  he  preferred  women  to  boys  as  drawers;  they  were  better  to  manage  and 
kept  time  better;  they  would  fight  and  shriek  and  everything  but  let  anybody  pass 
them.  The  London  National  Reformer  states  that  "The  first  woman  member  (Mrs. 
Jane  Pyne),  of  the  London  Society  of  Compositors  was  admitted  by  the  executive 
on  August  30  (189a).  Two  years  ago  Miss  Clementine  Black  applied  for  permis- 
sion to  join  the  society  but  the  request  had  to  be  refused  on  the  ground  that  "it 
was  not  proposed  that  woman  should  be  paid  on  the  same  scale  as  men." 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  44I 

in  the  United  States,  to  devote  herself  to   this  branch 
of  the  "woman  question,"  said: 

It  is  easy  for  a  young  girl  to  obtain  employment 
but  let  her  go  where  she  will,  even  in  government  po- 
sitions at  Washington,  she  will  find  her  innocence  as- 
sailed if  not  made  the  price  at  which  she  gets  a  chance 
to  work.  And  that  same  government  does  not  pay  its 
women  employees  the  same  amount  of  wages  for  the 
same  kind  of  work. 

In  the  Scottish  collieries  women  are  compelled  to 
work  in  mines  filled  with  gas  and  flooded  with  water,* 
little  girls  commencing  work  in  these  collieries  at 
four  years  of  age,  and  at  six  carrying  loads  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds  upon  their  backs.  Half 
clothed  women  work  by  the  side  of  entirely  nude  men, 
dragging  ponderous  loads  of  16,000  yards  a  day  by 
means  of  a  chain  fastened  to  a  belt,  the  severe  labor 
of  dragging  this  coal  up  inclined  places  to  the  mouth 
of  the  pit,  testing  every  muscle  and  straining  every 
nerve.  It  is  a  work  so  destructive  to  health  that  even 
the  stoutest  men  shrink  from  it,  women  engaged  in 
it  seldom  living  to  be  over  thirty  or  forty  years  of 
age. 

A  gentleman  traveling  in  Ireland  blushed  for  his  sex 
when  he  saw  the  employments  of  women  young  and 
old.  He  described  them  as  patient  drudges,  staggering 
over  the  bogs  with  heavy  creels  of  turf  on  their  backs 
or  climbing  the  slopes  from  the  sea-shore  laden  like 
beasts  of  burden,  with  heavy  sand-dripping  sea-weed, 
or  undertaking  long  journeys  on  foot  into  the  market 
towns  bearing  heavy  hampers  of  farm  produce.  Man 
in  thrusting  the  enforcement  of  his  "curse"  upon  wo- 
man in  Christian  lands  has  made  her  the  great  unpaid 
laborer  of  the  world.    In  European  countries  and  in  the 

3.    Lecture  by  Felix  Adler,  x8ga,     The  Position  0/  Woman  in  the  Present, 


442  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

United  States,  we  find  her  everywhere  receiving  less 
pay  than  man  for  the  same  kind  and  quality  of  work. 
A  recent  statement  regarding  women  workers  in  the 
foundries  of  Pittsburgh,  Penn.,  where  five  hundred 
women  are  employed  in  putting  heads  on  nails  and 
bolts,  declared  they  received  less  than  one-half  the 
sum  formerly  paid  to  men  who  did  the  same  kind  of 
work;  women  getting  from  but  four  to  five  dollars  a 
week  while  the  wages  of  men  ranged  from  fourteen  to 
sixteen  dollars  a  week.  But  as  evil  as  the  experience 
of  young  women  in  the  world  of  work,  that  of  old  wo- 
men is  in  some  respects  even  greater.  While  the 
young  girl  is  almost  certain  to  obtain  work  even  if 
at  small  wages,  it  is  very  difficult  for  the  woman  of 
mature  years  to  obtain  work  at  all,  either  in  house- 
holds as  seamstresses  or  in  manufactories.  Societies 
in  the  City  of  New  York,  for  the  aid  of  the  working 
women  find  it  impossible  to  secure  employment  for 
middle-aged  women.  The  report  of  one  such  society 
stated  that  some  of  these  women  managed  to  procure 
commitment  to  the  Island  in  order  to  obtain  food  and 
prevent  absolute  starvation;  others  slowly  died  from 
want  of  sufficient  food;  still  others,  like  the  poor 
hard  working  girls  of  Paris,  sought  the  river  as  an 
end  to  their  sufferings.  As  in  the  witchcraft  period 
when  the  chief  persecution  for  many  years  raged  against 
old  women,  we  still  find  in  our  own  country  that  the 
woman  of  middle  life  is  the  least  regarded  in  her  efforts 
for  a  livelihood.  The  reason  remains  the  same.  Looked 
upon  during  the  Christian  ages  from  a  sensual  stand- 
ard, the  church  teaching  that  woman  was  made  for 
man  still  exerts  its  poisonous  influence,  still  destroys 
woman.  Not  alone  employers  and  male  laborers  oppress 
woman,  but  legislation  is  frequently    invoked    to  pre- 


WOMAN  AND    WORK  443 

vent  her  entering  certain  occupations.  The  Coal 
Miner's  Bill  was  one  of  many  instances  in  Great 
Britain.  Women  work  there  also  at  making  nails, 
spikes  and  chains.  Not  long  since  legislation  prohib- 
iting their  entering  this  branch  of  work  was  at- 
tempted, when  a  deputation  of  women  iron-workers 
waited  upon  the  home  secretary  to  protest  aginst  gov- 
ernment interference  with  their  right  to  earn  a  liveli- 
hood. One  of  these  representative  women  had  entered 
the  work  at  seven  years  of  age,  being  then  fifty-seven. 
Having  spent  nearly  half  a  century  in  this  occupation 
she  was  practcally  incapacitated  for  any  other  form  of 
labor. 

The  terrible  condition  of  working  women  in  Paris, 
has  attracted  the  attention  of  the  French  government. 
In  but  three  or  four  trades  are  they  even  fairly  well 
paid,  and  these  few  require  a  peculiar  adaptation,  as 
well  as  an  expensive  training  out  of  reach  of  most 
women  laborers.  And  even  in  these  best  paid  kinds 
of  work,  a  discrimination  in  favor  of  man  exists;  at 
the  China  manufactory  at  Sevres  where  the  men  em- 
ployed receive  a  retiring  pension,  the  women  do  not. 
From  fifteen  to  eighteen  pence  represents  the  daily 
earnings  of  the  Parisian  working  girl,  upon  which  sum 
it  is  impossible  for  her  to  properly  support  life.  Many 
of  these  girls  die  of  slow  starvation,  others  are  driven 
into  prostitution,  still  others  seek  relief  in  the  Seine. 
French  women  perform  the  most  repulsive  labors  of 
the  docks;  they  work  in  the  mines  dragging  or  push- 
ing heavy  trucks  of  coal  like  their  English  sisters, 
through  narrow  tunnels  that  run  from  the  seams  to 
the  shaft ;  eating  food  of  such  poor  quality  that  the 
lessening  stature  of  the  population  daily  shows  the 
result.    This  decreasing  size  of  Frenchmen  especially 


444  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

among  the  peasantry,  the  majority  not  coming  up  to 
the  regulation  army  height,  has  within  the  last  fifteen 
or  twenty  years  called  attention  of  the  government 
during  conscription,  yet  without  seeming  to  teach  its 
cause  as  lying  in  the  poor  food  and  hard  labor  of  wo- 
men, the  mothers  of  these  men.  The  heaviest  burdens 
of  porters,  the  most  offensive  sanitary  work,  the  se- 
verest agricultural  labor  in  that  country  falls  upon 
woman.  "I  pity  the  women,  the  donkeys,  and  the 
boys,"  wrote  Mrs.  Stanton  when  traveling  in  the  south 
of  France.  It  is  the  poor  nourishment  and  excessive 
labor  of  woman  which  makes  France  to-day  a  country 
of  rapidly  decreasing  birth-rate,  seriously  affecting  its 
population  and  calling  the  earnest  attention  of  sta- 
tistical bureaus  and  physicians  to  this  vital  question; 
a  question  which  affects  the  standing  of  France  among 
the  nations  of  the  earth.  According  to  the  report  of 
the  chief  of  the  statistical  bureau,  1890,  there  were  fewer 
births  than  deaths  that  year,  the  births  amounting 
to  838,059,  the  deaths  to  876,505,  an  excess  of  38,446 
deaths.  Commenting  upon  these  returns,  "Der  Reichs- 
bote"  of  Berlin,  attributed  the  cause  to  a  wide-spread 
aversion  to  large  families;  acknowledging,  however, 
that  the  lower  classes  had  become  weakened  and 
dwarfed  by  the  tasks  imposed  upon  them.  What 
neither  the  statistical  bureau,  the  press,  or  the  church 
yet  comprehend  is  the  fact  that  the  work  imposed  up- 
on its  Christian  women,  the  "curse"  of  man  thrust 
upon  her,  is  the  chief  cause  of  the  lessening  size  and 
lessening  population  of  that  country.  A  French  gen- 
tleman employing  a  large  number  of  women  in  a 
flax  factory  was  appalled  at  the  great  amount  of  infant 
mortality  among  the  children  of  his  employees.  Believ- 
ing the  excessive  death  rate   to    be  in    consequence  of 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  445 

the  continued  labor  of  women,  he  released  expectant 
mothers  for  a  month  previous,  and  two  months  after 
the  birth  of  a  child,  with  a  marked  diminution  of  the 
death  rate.  The  ordinary  food  of  the  peasantry  is  of 
poor  quality  and  meager  quantity.  Those  employed 
in  the  manufacture  of  silk  largely  subsist  upon  a  spe- 
cies of  black  broth  proverbial  for  its  lack  of  nutritive 
qualities.  The  absence  of  certain  elements  in  food 
both  creates  specific  diseases  and  inability  to  combat 
disease.  Vital  stamina  is  closely  dependent  upon  the 
number  of  red  corpusles  in  the  blood,  the  quality  of 
food  possessing  direct  connection  with  these  corpus- 
cles. Dr.  Blackwell,  of  the  London  Anthropological 
Society,  examined  the  blood  of  different  races  as  re- 
lated to  the  food  eaten  by  them,  finding  the  number 
and  shape  of  the  red  corpuscles  to  be  dependent  upon 
the  kind  of  food  eaten.  Dr.  Richardson,  a  Philadel- 
phia microscopist,  said  :  "Any  cause  which  interferes 
with  perfect  nutrition  may  diminish  the  red  corpuscles 
in  number."  These  corpuscles  are  recognized  as  "ox- 
ygen carriers,"  therefore  any  cause  which  tends  to 
diminish  the  number  of  red  corpuscles  also  deprives 
the  system  of  a  portion  of  the  oxygen  required  for 
sanitary  needs.  Blood  not  fully  oxygenated  is  poisonous 
to  the  system.  Among  the  causes  recognized  by  phys- 
iologists as  creating  that  alteration  in  the  functions 
of  the  body  which  materially  changes  the  character  oi 
the  red  corpuscles,  are  poor  food,  bad  air  and  over- 
work. These  specifically  produce  blood  poisoning, 
creating  new  substances  in  the  body  that  are  inju- 
rious to  the  organism. 

It  is  not  alone  in  France  that  such  effects  are  to  be 
noted,  although  governmental  attention  has  not  else- 
where been  called  to  the  condition  produced,  yet  twen- 


446  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STA1 

ty  years  since,  "Frazer's  Magazine"  in  an  article  on 
"Field  Farming  Women  in  England"  in  reference  to 
the  poor  food  and  overwork  of  women  of  this  class, 
said  of  their  children:  "The  boys  are  always  very 
short  for  their  age,  those  of  fifteen  being  no  larger 
than  town  boys  of  ten;  girls  are  thin  and  skinny,  an- 
gular and  bony."  Eight  years  ago,  Dr.  Rochad,  who 
has  given  much  time  to  this  question,  prophesied  that 
the  population  of  France  would  become  stationary  be- 
fore tne  end  of  the  century.  At  that  time  his  words 
carried  no  weight;  he  was  ridiculed  as  a  vague  the- 
orizer,  but  this  result  has  been  reached  in  one  half 
the  time  he  gave  and  the  results  are  even  of  graver 
character  than  Dr.  Rochad  assumed  them  to  be.  The 
balance  has  already  fallen  upon  the  opposite  side  and 
in  a  single  year  the  deaths  have  outnumbered  the 
births  nearly  40,000.  Two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
infants  annually  die  in  France  because  of  the  impov- 
erished blood,  hard  work  and  general  innutrition  of 
French  mothers.  "These  lives  are  the  more  precious 
to  France  which  can  no  longer  afford  to  lose  them, 
since  in  a  single  year  the  death  rate  outnumbered  the 
birth  rate  40,000.  Through  the  effort  of  Dr.  Rochad, 
a  society  has  been  organized,  rules  for  feeding  infants 
formulated  with  penalties  attached,  and  like  futile 
methods  for  effecting  a  change  suggested;  while  the 
real  cause  of  the  lessening  population  is  left  untouched. 
Until  the  condition  of  the  mother  as  life-giver  is  held 
as  sacred  under  Christianity  as  it  was  among  the  Greeks 
and  Romans;  until  man  taking  his  own  "curse"  upon 
himself  frees  woman  from  its  penalties;  until  she  and 
her  young  children  are  supplied  with  nourishing  food 
and  woman  secures  pure  air  to  breathe  and  freedom 
from  the  hardships  so  supremely  her  lot  under  existing 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  447 

laws  and  customs,  not   until  then  will    a    change  take 
place.      Parker  Pillsbury  in  "Popular  Religion,"   says: 

Once  I  journeyed  among  the  magnificent  fields,  vil- 
lages and  vineyards  in  the  south  of  France.  Women 
tanned,  browned,  almost  bronzed  by  the  sun,  wind 
and  much  exposure,  weary  and  worn,  many  of  them 
mothers,  or  soon  to  become  such,  spaded,  shoveled, 
plowed,  harrowed,  often  drawing  harrows  themselves 
across  furrowed  fields;  they  mowed,  raked,  pitched, 
loaded  and  unloaded  the  hay  of  the  meadows;  they 
harvested  the  crops  and  then  hastened  to  haul  manure 
and  prepare  the  ground  for  other  crops,  rising  early 
and  toiling  late,  doing  almost  all  kinds  of  work  men 
do  anywhere,  and  some  kinds  which  neither  man  nor 
woman  should  ever  do. 

Germany,  whose  women  were  revered  in  the  centu- 
ries before  Christianity,  now  degrades  them  to  the  level 
of  beasts.  Women  and  dogs  harnessed  together  are 
found  drawing  milk  carts  in  the  streets;  women  and 
cows  yoked  draw  the  plough  in  the  fields;  the  German 
peasant  wife  works  on  the  roads  or  carries  mortar  to 
the  top  of  the  highest  buildings,  while  her  husband 
smokes  his  pipe  at  the  foot  of  the  ladder  until  she 
descends  for  him  to  again  fill  the  hod.  To  such  ex- 
tent is  woman  a  laborer  that  she  comes  in  competition 
with  the  railroad  and  all  public  methods  of  traffic. 
Eight-tenths  of  the  agricultural  laborers  are  women; 
they  plow  and  sow,  and  reap  the  grain  and  carry  im- 
mense loads  of  offal  for  fertilizing  the  land.  As  street 
cleaners  they  collect  the  garbage  of  towns,  work  with 
brooms  and  shovels  to  cleanse  roadways;  and  harnessed 
alone,  or  with  cows  or  dogs,  perform  all  the  most  re- 
pulsive labors  of  the  fields  and  streets.  Nor  for  a 
knowledge  of  their  work  are  we  dependent  upon  the 
statements  of  travelers,  but  official  documents  corrob- 
orate the  worst.   An  American  consul  says  of  a  Circular 


448  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Upon  Labor  recently  issued  by  the  German  government: 
An  important  factor  in  the  labor  of  Germany  is  not 
enquired  of  in  the  circular,  viz  ,  the  labor  of  dogs.  I 
have  heard  it  estimated  that  women  and  dogs  har- 
nessed together  do  more  hauling  than  the  railroads 
and  all  other  modes  of  conveyance  of  goods  united. 
Hundreds  of  small  wagons  can  be  seen  every  day  on 
all  the  roads  leading  to  and  from  Dresden,  each  hav- 
ing a  dog  for  the  "near  horse"  harnessed,  while  the 
"off  horse"  is  a  woman  with  her  left  hand  grasping 
the  wagon  tongue  to  give  it  direction,  and  the  right 
hand  passed  through  a  loop  in  the  rope  which  is  at- 
tached to  the  axle,  binding  the  shoulder;  the  har- 
nessed woman  and  dog  trudge  along  together,  pulling 
miraculous  loads  in  all  sorts  of  weather. 

The  pay  of  woman  for  this  strange,  degrading  labor 
is  from  ten  to  twenty-five  cents  a  day.  Nor  is  that  of 
sewing  more  remunerative.  In  March,  1892,  a  libel 
suit  against  an  embroidery  manufacturer  brought  to 
light  the  fact  that  women  in  his  employ  received  but 
five  cents  a  day.  No  burden  in  Germany  is  considered 
too  heavy  for  woman  until  the  failing  strength  of  old 
age  necessitates  a  change  of  occupation,  when  amid  all 
varities  of  weather  they  take  the  place  of  the  news- 
boys of  our  own  country,  selling  papers  upon  the 
streets.  Munich,  the  capital  of  Bavarian  Germany, 
is  famed  for  its  treasury  of  art;  paintings,  ancient 
and  modern  sculptures,  old  manuscripts  of  inestimable 
value,  large  libraries  and  splendid  architecture  make 
it  the  seat  of  the  fine  arts.  But  its  women  are  still 
victims  of  Christian  civilization.  Dresden  is  another 
city  whose  art  treasures  and  architectural  beauty  has 
rendered  it  famous  among  European  cities  as  the  "Ger- 
man Florence."  Yet  both  of  these  cities  employ  wo- 
men in  the  same  kinds  of  work  under  the  same  repul- 
sive conditions  that  are  found  in  other  portions  of 
that  empire. 


WOMAN   AND  WORK  449 

Bavarian  men  wearing  heavy  wooden  shoes  drive 
their  bare-footed  wives  and  daughters  before  the  plough 
in  the  field,  or  harnessed  with  dogs  send  them  as  car- 
riers of  immense  loads  of  merchandise  through  the 
cities.      Says  a  writer: 

Women  become  beasts  of  burden;  still  they  do  not 
grumble;  they  do  not  smile  either — they  simply  exist. 
The  only  liberty  they  have  is  liberty  to  work ;  the 
only  rest  they  have  is  sleep.  The  existence  of  a  cow 
or  a  sheep  is  a  perpetual  heaven,  while  theirs  is  a 
perpetual  hell. 

In  addition  to  all  this  out-of-door  labor  performed 
by  the  German  women,  they  have  that  of  the  house  and 
the  preparation  of  clothing  for  the  family.  They  in- 
dustriously knit  upon  the  street  while  doing  errands; 
they  cook,  they  spin  and  make  clothing  which  takes 
them  afar  into  the  night,  rearing  their  children  amid 
labor  so  severe  as  forever  to  drive  smiles  from  their 
faces,  bringing  the  wrinkles  of  premature  old  age  in 
their  place.  Switzerland,  whose  six  hundredth  anni- 
versary was  celebrated  in  1888,  the  oldest  republic, 
sees  its  women  carrying  luggage  and  blacking  boots 
as  porters  at  inns;  propelling  heavily  laden  barges 
down  its  romantic  lakes;  swinging  the  scythe  by  the 
side  of  men  in  the  fields  ;  bringing  great  baskets  of  hay 
strapped  to  their  shoulders  down  the  mountain  side; 
carrying  litters  containing  travelers  up  the  same  steep 
mountain  top;  bringing  heavy  baskets  of  fagots  from 
the  forests,  and  carrying  in  the  more  pleasant  cutting 
of  grapes  at  the  vineyard  harvest.  From  five  o'clock 
in  the  morning  till  eight  in  the  evening  is  the  peasant 
woman's  day  of  work.  A  stolid,  expressionless  face, 
eyes  from  which  no  soul  seems  to  look,  a  magnificent 
body  as  stong  as  that  of  the  man  by  her  side,  is  the 
result  of  the  Swiss  woman's   hardships  and  work.     It 


45°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

is  but  a  few  years  since  the  laws  of  Switzerland  com- 
pelled division  of  the  paternal  estate  with  sisters  as 
well  as  brothers,  this  change  provoking  intense  oppo- 
sition from  the  men.  On  the  Alps,  husbands  borrow 
and  lend  their  wives,  one  neighbor  not  scrupling  to 
ask  the  loan  of  another's  wife  to  complete  some  farm- 
ing task,  which  loan  is  readily  granted  with  the  under 
standing  that  the  favor  is  to  be  returned  in  kind.  Says 
one  writer: 

The  farmers  in  the  Upper  Alps,  though  by  no 
means  wealthy,  live  like  lords  in  their  houses,  while 
the  heaviest  portion  of  agricultural  labors  devolves  up- 
on the  wife.  It  is  no  uncommon  thing  to  see  a  wo- 
man yoked  to  a  plough  with  an  ass,  while  her  husband 
guides  it.  An  Alpine  farmer  counts  it  an  act  of  po- 
liteness to  lend  his  wife  to  a  neighbor  who  has  too 
much  work,  and  the  neighbor  in  return  lends  his  wife 
for  a  few  days  labor  whenever  requested. 

In  Vienna,  women  lay  the  brick  in  building,  while 
throughout  Austria  young  girls  carry  mortar  for  such 
work.  They  also  work  in  the  fields,  in  the  mines, 
pave  and  clean  the  streets,  or  like  their  German  sis- 
ters, harnessed  with  dogs,  drag  sprinklers  for  the  street 
or  serve  milk  at  the  customer's  door.  Prussian  women 
are  also  to  be  found  working  the  mines,  in  quarries  in 
foundries,  building  railroads,  acting  as  sailors  and 
boatmen,  or  like  those  of  Holland,  dragging  barges 
in  place  of  horses  on  the  canals,  or  like  those  of  other 
European  countries,  performing  the  most  severe  and 
repulsive  agricultural  labors.  A  correspondent  of  the 
"Cincinnati  Commercial"  traveling  through  Belgium, 
said  :  "No  work  seems  to  be  done  except  by  woman 
and  dogs.  With  few  exceptions  women  do  the  har- 
vesting, working  like  oxen."  The  'physiological  fact 
that  the  kind  of  labor  and  the  kind  of  food  affect  the 
physical  frame  is   noticeable  in   Belgium  the   same  as 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  45 1 

in  France  and  England.  Women  of  all  ages  from 
fourteen  to  sixty,  work  in  the  coal  mines,  married  wo- 
men sometimes  carrying  babies  strapped  to  their  backs 
into  the  pit,  laying  the  infants  near  them  while  dig- 
ging coal,  some  mine  owners  refusing  to  employ  a 
miner  unless  he  can  bring  one  or  more  members  of 
his  family  into  the  pit  with  him.  Employers  prefer 
girls  and  women  because  of  their  lower  wages  and 
greater  docility;  for  twelve  hours  work  a  woman  re- 
ceives but  thirty  cents.  Even  in  little  Montenegro, 
husbands  lend  their  wives  to  each  other  during  the 
harvest  season,  and  an  exceptionally  strong  or  quick- 
moving  wife  finds  exceptional  demand  for  her  services. 
This  little  state  degrades  woman  to  still  greater  extent 
than  her  sister  countries,  as  they  there  form  the  beasts 
of  burden  in  war,  and  are  counted  among  the  "ani- 
mals" belonging  to  the  prince. 

The  Russian  peasant  woman  under  the  Greek  church, 
finds  life  equally  a  burden,  and  is  even  to  greater  ex- 
tent than  in  most  countries  the  slave  of  her  husband 
and  the  priest,  no  form  of  labor  or  torture  being  looked 
upon  as  too  severe  to  impose  upon  her.  The  women 
are  much  more  industrious  than  the  men  and  the  hard- 
est work  is  done  by  them.  As  Russia  is  primarily  an 
agricultural  country  it  possesses  immense  fields  of  hay 
oats  and  wheat,  the  work  largely  performed  by  wo- 
men. The  wheat  sown  broadcast  is  either  harvested 
with  sickles  or  the  old-fashioned  scythe  with  a  broad 
blade  Women  do  the  entire  work  of  gathering  up, 
binding  and  stacking  the  wheat,  neighbors  during  har- 
vest helping  each  other.  Women  of  every  ♦  age  from 
the  young  girl  to  the  aged  grandmother,  take  part, 
assembling  at  daybreak.  Horses  are  also  there  in 
number  for  carrying    food,    water,  extra    implements, 


452  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

and  the  men  and  boys  of  the  conclave.  The  women, 
however  aged,  walk;  the  day's  work  lasting  over 
eighteen  hours  or  from  daybreak  until  dark;  in  that 
northern  land  at  harvest  time  it  continues  light  from 
3  a.  m.  to  9  130  p.  m.  Nor  are  mothers  with  young 
infants  excused  from  this  toil.  Babies  are  carried  in- 
to the  fields  where  they  lie  all  day  under  trees,  or 
partially  sheltered  by  a  bough  over  them,  covered  with 
insects  from  which  the  mother  can  find  no  time  to  re- 
lieve them.  Under  such  circumstances  of  neglect,  it 
is  not  surprising  that  infant  mortality  is  excessive. 
Nor  do  the  children  of  a  slightly  larger  growth  receive 
the  care  requisite  for  their  tender  years,  and  it  is 
estimated  that  eight  out  of  every  ten  children  in  Rus- 
sia die  under  ten  years  of  age.  But  no  one  form  of 
Christianity  monopolizes  the  wrong.  Everywhere, 
under  every  name  and  sect,  man  has  thrown  the  carry- 
ing out  of  his  "curse"  on  to  woman.  Italy,  the  cen- 
ter of  Catholicism,  under  a  careful  analysis  of  statis- 
tics, showing  that  the  wages  of  the  Italian  working  wo- 
man do  not  exceed  four  pence  a  day.  In  Venice  a 
traveler  was  recently  shown  some  wonderfully  beautiful 
articles  of  clothing;  scarfs,  shawls,  mantles,  handker- 
chiefs, many  of  them  requiring  six  months'  for  the 
production;  expressing  amazement  at  the  astonish- 
ingly low  price  demanded  for  such  exquisite  fabrics 
he  was  told,  "we  pay  our  young  girls  but  seven  cents 
a  day."  A  correspondent  of  the  Philadelphia  "Press," 
writing  from  abroad  in  1885,  declared  the  debasement 
of  woman  to  be  more  thorough  and  complete  in  Prot- 
estant Stockholm  than  in  any  city  of  northern  Europe, 
as  there  she  supplanted  the  beasts  of  burden.  He 
spoke  of  her  as  doing  all  the  heavy  work  on  buildings 
and  paid  only  one   kroner  (equivalent  to  a  trifle  over 


WOMAN    AND  WORK  453 

twenty-six  cents)  for  a  hard  day  of  this  toil.  He  found 
women  sweeping  the  streets,  hauling  rubbish,  drag- 
ging hand-carts  up  the  hills  and  over  the  cobble-stones, 
unloading  bricks  at  the  quays,  attending  to  the  parks, 
doing  the  gardening  and  rowing  the  numerous  ferries 
which  abound  in  that  city.  The  entire  dairy  business 
of  the  city  is  in  their  hands  and  here  they  have  the 
help  of  neither  horses  nor  dogs  but  take  the  entire 
place  of  the  beasts,  carrrying  the  heavy  cans  of  milk  on 
their  shoulders  from  door  to  door;  he  said  : 

I  am  not  altogether  unfamiliar  with  woman's  work 
in  Europe;  I  have  seen  her  around  the  pit  mouth,  at 
the  forge,  and  bare  foot  in  the  brick  yards  of  "merrie" 
England;  filling  blast  furnaces  and  tending  coke  ovens 
in  "sunny  France."  I  have  sadly  watched  her  bearing 
the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day  in  the  fields  of  the 
"fatherland"  and  in  Austria-Hungary  doing  the  work 
of  man  and  beast  on  the  farm  and  in  the  mine.  I  have 
seen  women  emerge  from  the  coal  pits  of  "busy  Bel- 
gium" where  little  girls  and  young  women  were  under- 
ground bearers  of  coal  and  draweis  of  carts.  Aged, 
bent  and  sunburned,  I  have  seen  women  with  rope 
over  shoulder  toiling  on  the  banks  of  canals  and  over 
dykes  in  "picturesque  Holland."  Having  witnessed 
all  this,  I  was  yet  surprised  to  find  in  a  city  so  beau- 
tiful and  seemingly  so  rich  as  Stockholm,  women  even 
more  debased. 

In  the  Connellsville  coke  region  of  Pennsylvania, 
United  States,  the  Hungarian  woman  workers  are 
found  engaged  in  the  severest  labor  under  authority 
of  the  husband  or  father,  half  nude  women  drawing 
the  hot  coke  from  the  chambers.  Master  Workman 
Powderly  visiting  the  place  early  one  morning,  said 
of  it: 

At  one  of  the  ovens  I  saw  a  woman  half  naked 
drawing  the  coke  from  one  of  the  chambers.  She  had 
no  covering  on  her  head  and  very  little  on  her  person. 


454  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Her  appearance  was  that  of  one  whose  spirit  had  been 
broken  by  hardship  and  hard  work.  Her  attire  con- 
sisted of  a  chemise  and  a  pair  of  cowhide  boots.  In  a 
freight  car  close  by  stood  another  woman  forking  the 
coke  as  it  came  into  the  car.  The  woman  stood  in 
the  doorway  and  was  dressed  in  a  rough,  loose-fitting 
outer  garment  and  an  apron.  Her  person  from  the 
waist  up  was  exposed.  When  she  stooped  over  to 
handle  the  coke,  she  caught  her  hair  between  her  teeth 
in  order  to  keep  it  out  of  her  way.  Her  babe  which 
she  brought  to  the  works  with  her,  lay  in  front  of  the 
car  with  scarcely  any  covering  except  the  shadow  of 
a  wheel  barrow  which  was  turned  up  in  order  to  pro- 
tect the  child  from  the  rays  of  the  sun. 

The  suffering  of  helpless  infants   and   children  from 
privation  and  neglect    through    enforced   labor    of  the 
mother,  is  one  of  the  most  shocking  things   connected 
with  this  degradation  of  woman  in  labor.     The  owner- 
ship by  the  husband  of  the  wife's  services;   his  powei 
under  the  Christian  law    of  church    and  state   of  com- 
pelling her  to  work  for  him;     the   public  sentiment  of 
church  and  state  which  not  alone    recognizes  absolute 
authority   over  the    wife  as    inhering  in  the    husband, 
but  which  are  the  creators  of  such  belief,  are  the  causes 
of  illness,  death,  moral    degradation,    insanity,    crime 
and  vice  of  every  kind.      One  year   even,    of    civilized 
housekeeping  with  its  routine   of   washing,    starching, 
ironing,  scrubbing,  cooking,  baking,  pickling,  canning, 
sewing,  sweeping,    house-cleaning,   ete.,  etc.,    with  all 
their  accompanying    overheating    and  overlifting;    the 
care  of  children  both  night  and    day,  whether   sick  or 
well,  the  constant  demands  upon  her  time  and  strength, 
thrown    upon    women    of  the  Christian    household,  are 
labors  more  severe   than   fell   on  the    old-time    savage 
woman  of  America  during  her    whole  life.      Until    the 
customs    of    civilization     reached    the    Indians,     their 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  455 

wives,  according  to  Catlin,  Schoolcraft  and  others, 
were  not  called  upon  to  work  with  half  the  severity  of 
the  women  of  to-day,  nor  had  they  tradition  of  children 
ever  born  deaf,  dumb  or  blind.  Those  kinds  of  la- 
bor pointed  to  as  showing  the  hardships  of  an  Indian 
woman's  life,  Schoolcraft  dismisses  very  lightly.  The 
lodge  built  by  her  is  not  made  of  heavy  posts  and  car- 
pentry, but  of  thin  poles  bent  over  at  the  top,  such 
as  a  child  can  lift.  When  a  family  changed  its  resi- 
dence these  poles  were  not  removed ;  only  the  thin 
sheets  of  birch  bark  covering,  were  taken  to  the  new 
rendezvous.  The  gathering  of  the  fuel  by  the  women, 
was  cutting  dry  limbs  of  the  forest  not  over  eighteen 
inches  in  length,  with  a  hatchet.  The  tillage  of  the 
fields  shared  alike  by  the  old  men,  women  and  the 
boys,  was  very  light.  No  oxen  to  drive,  no  plough 
to  hold,  no  wheat  to  plant  or  thresh.  The  same  corn 
hills  were  used  year  after  year,  forming  small  mounds 
that  were  long  a  puzzle  to  the  antiquarian.  The 
squash  and  the  pumpkin  grew  luxuriantly,  while  the 
children  made  holidays  of  gathering  nuts  and  acorns 
for  winter  use.  And  to  day  Africa,  "The  Dark  Con- 
tinent" is  the  children's  paradise,  says  Mrs.  French 
Sheldon,  the  wonderful  woman  explorer,  who  carried 
peace  with  her  everywhere  and  whose  investigations 
in  that  part  of  the  world  exceed  in  value  those  of 
Livingstone  or  Stanley.     She  says: 

In  all  these  months  among  the  children  every  day, 
I  never  saw  a  child  struck  and  I  heard  a  child  cry  but 
twice  while  on   the  Dark  Continent. 

How  different  from  the  countries  of  Christian  civil- 
ization where  children,  mere  infants  of  three  and  four 
years,  are  put  to  the  most  severe  labor  or  because  of 
the  mother's  enslaved  condition,  die  from  neglect.    It 


45$  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

will  be  said,  but  these  instances,  especially  in  the 
United  States,  are  exceptional.  This  is  not  so,  al- 
though the  work  performed  may  be  of  a  different  char- 
acter. The  wife  even  in  this  country  is  expected  to  un- 
derstand and  perform  many  kinds  of  labor.  She  is 
cook  and  baker,  laundress  and  seamstress,  nurse  for 
her  children  and  the  sick,  besides  a  thousand  and  one 
cares  which  rise  before  her  every  hour.  One  such 
overworked  mother  acknowledged  to  placing  the  cradle 
where  the  sun  would  shine  in  the  baby's  eyes,  thus 
compelling  them  to  close,  when  she  would  push  all 
out  of  the  way  underneath  the  bed.  Said  a  German 
girl  working  "as  help"  in  the  modern  kitchen  of  a  well- 
to-do  American  family.  "I  plowed  at  home  harnessed 
beside  a  cow,  and  the  work  was  not  as  hard  as  in  your 
hot  kitchen."  The  care  of  children  and  domestic  labor 
are  not  compatible  with  each  other.  One  must  be 
neglected,  and  she  of  whom,  'meals  on  time*  are  de- 
manded, can  say  where  the  neglect  necessarily  falls. 
A  consistent  carrying  out  by  man  of  his  "curse"  would 
cause  him  to  take  upon  himself  the  entire  work  of  the 
world  ;  not  alone  tilling  the  soil,  but  all  household 
labor  ;  the  baking  and  brewing,  the  cooking  and  cleaning 
and  all  the  multitudinous  forms  of  work  which  make 
such  wearisomely  incessant  demands  upon  woman's 
strength  and  time.  From  all  sewing,  knitting,  crochet- 
ing, embroidering,  she  should  be  freed,  and  even  be- 
yond this,  under  the  principles  of  his  "curse,"  upon 
man  should  fall  all  the  work  of  rearing  children,  as 
woman's  "curse"  so  often  quoted  does  not  refer  to  aught 
but  bringing  them  to  life  in  sorrrow  and  suffering. 
Custom,  which  has  been  defined  as  unwritten  law,  adds 
its  force  to  legislative  enactments  and  soon  becomes  as 
binding    upon    thought  as  a  moral  command.     People 


WOMAN   AND  WORK  457 

soon  cease  to  question  a  custom,  or  a  law,  accepting 
both  in  that  conservative  spirit  so  utterly  destructive 
to  liberty.  For  that  reason  what  has  long  been  so,  is 
regarded  as  right,  and  even  while  regretting  the  neglect 
of  her  children  so  unavoidable  to  the  ordinarily  situ- 
ated mothers,  few  women  give  thought  to  the  cause 
bringing  it  about.  Women  are  not  sufficiently  perme- 
ated with  the  meaning  of  personal  liberty.  They  do 
not  sufficiently  investigate  the  causes  of  their  restricted 
condition,  and  the  break  made  within  the  past  twenty- 
five  to  forty  years  against  conditions,  has  rather  been 
in  the  nature  of  a  blind  instinctive  revolt,  than  brought 
about  through  philosophic  thought  except  in  the  minds 
of  a  few,  who  by  the  protest  of  speech,  opened  the  way 
that  vast  multitudes  are  now  entering  upon.  Open  re- 
bellion against  law  is  ever  considered  by  the  majority 
as  rebellion  against  morality.  Speaking  of  the  moral 
influence  of  law,  Sheldon  Amos  says: 

As  soon  as  a  law  is  made  and  lifted  out  of  the  re- 
gion of  controversy,  it  begins  to  exercise  a  moral  influ- 
ence which  is  no  less  intense  and  wide-spreading  for 
being  almost  imperceptible.  Though  law  can  never 
attempt  to  forbid  all  that  is  morally  wrong,  yet  that 
gets  to  be  held  as  morally  wrong  which  the  law  for- 
bids. 

No  less  does  unwritten  law  come  to  be  regarded  as 
morally  right.  The  customs  of  society  built  up  through 
teachings  of  the  church,  and  laws  of -the  state,  have 
destroyed  that  sense  of  personal  security  among  women 
which  is  the  chief  value  of  social  life  and  of  law.  The 
very  foundation  of  religion  tends  to  this  end  even  with 
man,  but  the  division  of  rights  and  duties  promulgated 
by  the  church  as  between  man  and  woman,  the  chang- 
ing form  of  laws — class  legislation — has  rendered  the 
position  of  woman  notably  insecure.     This  usurpation 


458  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

is  productive  of  immense  loss  to  the  state  as  France 
so  clearly  shows.  Take  the  one  article  of  food  alone, 
the  delicacies  and  the  substantiate  alike  are  claimed 
by  man.  No  proof  of  this  statement  other  than  the 
innumerable  saloons  and  restaurants  chiefly  supported 
by  men,  is  required.  While  the  dairyman,  the  bird- 
fancier,  the  horse  trainer,  and  even  the  pugilist,  rec- 
ognize the  value  of  food  as  far  as  a  factor  of  life  and 
strength,  where  his  own  immediate  money  interest  is 
concerned,  neither  governments,  religions  nor  scien- 
tists have  to  any  extent  noted  the  influence  of  proper 
food  for  the  mother  upon  the  health  and  life  of  the 
unborn  child.  Victor  Hugo,  while  upon  the  island  of 
Guernsey,  noted  the  vastly  beneficial  effect  that  even 
one  good  meal  a  week  had  upon  the  peasant  children. 
Food,  building  muscles,  nerves,  the  brain,  what  can 
be  expected  but  a  deterioration  of  humanity  when 
mothers  eat  insufficient  or  improper  food? 

The  effect  of  the  kind  of  food  eaten  has  recently 
been  noted  in  the  new  industry  of  ostrich  farming,  in 
California,  of  which  it  is  said:  "Ostriches  yield  the 
best  feathers  if  the  birds  are  well  cared  for.  The  qual- 
ity of  the  plumes  depends  upon  the  quality  of  the 
food.  If  the  ostriches  are  well  fed,  their  plumes  are 
soft  and  big.  Bad  feeding  makes  the  feathers  hard 
and  coarse."  Nor  are  animals  from  whom  the  best 
products  are  looked  for,  allowed  to  labor.  Their  lives 
are  those  of  ease  and  comfort  that  best  results  may  be 
obtained.  Innutrition  and  the  hard  labor  of  expectant 
mothers  are  the  two  great  factors  in  physical  degener- 
ation and  infantile  mortality.  The  question  is  not 
one  of  sentiment  or  of  law  or  of  religion,  but  of  physi- 
ology. It  does  not  alone  involve  the  destiny  of  moth- 
ers but  of  the  race.     There  is  not  a  national  problem, 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  459 

be  it  of  war  or  population  or  finance  that  is  not  based 
upon  the  condition  of  woman.  Its  neglect  has  de- 
populated the  world  in  times  past,  it  has  lessened 
intellectual  development,  it  has  almost  entirely  oblit- 
erated certain  kinds  of  morality  and  can  no  longer  be 
regarded  from  the  standard  of  either  of  those  great 
institutions,  church  or  state. 

The  recent  official  report  of  the  Factory  Inspector 
of  the  state  of  New  York  upon  the  condition  of  work- 
ing women,  showed  a  condition  quite  in  line  with  the 
worst  features  of  foreign  lands.  Overwork,  bad  ven- 
tilation, low  wages,  poor  food,  all  combining  for  their 
physical  and  moral  destruction.  "The  Churchman" 
under  heading  of  "In  Darkest  New  York"  speaks  of 
the  condition  of  the  poor  in  that  city,  both  men  and 
women;  but  while  not  forgetting  the  wrongs  of  the 
male  laborer,  we  must  ever  remember  that  the  condi- 
tion of  woman  is  still  lower,  and  the  results  of  her 
severe  work  and  semi-starvation,  much  more  injurious 
to  the  world. 

We  must  leave  the  tenements  without  attempting  to 
reproduce  any  of  the  shocking  cases  of  crowded  rooms 
in  which  almost  incredible  numbers  of  poor  wretches 
are  huddled  together  even  in  summer,  when  Mr.  Riis 
has  found  the  thermometer  rise  to  115  degrees.  In 
some  of  these  places  there  is  more  than  struggle;  there 
is  often  starvation.  Every  once  in  a  while  a  case  of 
downright  starvation  gets  into  the  papers  and  makes 
a  sensation.  But  this  is  the  exception.  Were  the 
whole  truth  known  it  would  come  home  to  the  com- 
munity with  a  shock  that  would  arouse  it  to  a  more 
serious  effort  than  the  spasmodic  undoing  of  its  purse- 
strings.  I  am  satisfied  that  hundreds  of  men,  women 
and  children  are  every  day  slowly  starving  to  death 
with  my  medical  friend's  complaint  of  'improper  nour- 
ishment. '  Within  a  single  week  I  have  had  this  year 
three  cases  of  insanity  provoked  directly  by  poverty 
and  want.     Worse  than  even    that  is    the  evil  case  of 


4-6o  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

thousands  of  ill-fated  working  girls.  The  average 
wages  of  150,000  of  them  is  60  cents  per  day;  and 
that  includes  the  incomes  of  the  stylish  'cashiers'  who 
earn  $2  a  day  as  well  as  the  pittance  of  girls  who 
earn  30  cents  a  day  in  east-side  factories.  The  lot 
of  the  average  saleswoman  who  does  not  partly  de- 
pend on  her  family  is  hard  indeed." 

That  the  average  wages  of  the  150,000  working  girls 
in  the  city  of  New  York  alone  are  but  sixty  cents  a 
day,  some  receiving  as  little  as  thirty  cents  in  the  east 
side  factories;  that  30,000  young  girls  between  the 
ages  of  twelve  and  fourteen  employed  as  cash  girls 
cannot  supply  themselves  with  food  unless  having 
parents  upon  whom  to  partially  depend,  are  no  less 
moral  than  material  questions.  Nor  are  they  questions 
confined  to  that  one  city,  or  to  any  one  portion  of  the 
United  States,  or  of  Christendom,  but  belong  to  hu- 
manity itself.  As  all  are  parts  of  one  great  whole, 
the  evil  that  afflicts  one  class  touches  all ;  all  suffer 
because  of  the  wrong  done  to  even  one  human  being. 
The  population  of  the  city  of  New  York  is  more  largely 
comprised  of  women  than  of  men  and  a  great  propor- 
tion of  this  class  are  dependent  upon  their  own  labor 
for  a  livelihood.  Although  many  foreign-born  women 
emigrate  to  this  country,  over  two  millions  having 
landed  upon  our  shores  within  the  nine  years  from 
1881  to  1890,  it  is  not  alone  upon  them  these  condi- 
tions of  severe  labor  fall,  but  native-born  American 
women,  both  within  and  without  the  household,  suffer 
from  the  same  kind  of  oppression.  Even  upon  the 
Pacific  coast  where  few  foreigners  except  Chinese  are 
found,  little  girls  of  five  and  six  years  are  put  to 
work  in  the  jute  mills  and  factories  by  side  of  their 
drudging  mothers,  whose  wages  do  not  equal  those  of 
the  men  employed.   In  government  clerkships  at  Wash- 


WOMAN   AND  WORK  461 

ington,  women  receive  but  one-half  the  pay  that  men 
receive  for  the  same  kind  and  quality  of  work.  Al- 
though the  sweating  system  in  the  manufactories  of 
clothing  has  called  the  nation's  attention  to  its  abuses, 
yet  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  under  sole  power  of 
Congress,  a  system  of  similar  nature  exists.  Nor  are 
statistics  of  woman's  severe  work  in  the  United  States 
of  immediately  recent  date.  The  labor  Commission 
report  of  the  state  of  Connecticut  for  1876,  declaring 
that  the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  farmer  engage  in 
work  which  he  can  find  no  man  to  do,  rising  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  working  until  nine  in  the 
evening.  Analyzing  the  statistics  of  the  Massachusetts 
Labor  Bureau  for  1891,  the  "Boston  Globe"  showed 
the  greatly  inferior  payment  of  women  laborers: 

The  figures  simply  show  that  in  the  employments 
in  which  the  very  lowest  wages  are  paid,  women  con- 
stitute over  70  per  cent,  of  the  workers,  while  in  the 
employments  where  as  high  as  $20  a  week  are  paid, 
they  constitute  hardly  over  3  percent.  In  addition  to 
all  this  is  the  humiliating  fact  that  in  some  occupa- 
tions, standing  side  by  side  with  men,  the  females  are 
paid  less  wages  for  the  same  work;  or,  what  amounts 
to  the  same  thing,  a  woman  of  20  years  or  upwards  is 
made  to  work  side  by  side  with  a  boy  of  ten  at  the 
same  wages  Women  are  compelled,  then,  to  fill  most 
of  the  cheap  places,  and  paid  less  wages  for  the  same 
work  at  that. 

In  this  report  the  shameful  fact  is  proven  through 
governmental  statistics  that  the  wages  paid  to  a  girl 
of  twenty  years  are  no  more  than  those  paid  a  boy  of 
ten,  women  constituting  over  seventy  per  cent,  of 
the  workers  to  whom  the  very  lowest  wages  are  paid. 
Underlying  all  other  results  are  those  upon  woman 
herself.  Before  every  question  of  population,  is  that 
of  woman  as  an  individual.     Overwork  and    the  under 


462  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

nourishment  of  muscle,  nerve,  brain,  render  her  own 
proper  evolution  either  as  a  physical  or  as  a  moral 
being  impossible.  To  just  the  extent  that  such  pres- 
sure comes  upon  her,  does  she  cease  to  be  a  morally 
responsible  being.  Thousands  to  whom  life  and  com- 
forts are  sweet,  throw  aside  all  scruples,  entering  that 
one  avenue  of  escape  always  open  to  a  young  woman 
or  a  girl.  For  the  statement  that  the  majority  of  wo- 
men entering  upon  immorality  have  been  driven  by 
actual  want  to  this  mode  of  life,  we  are  again  indebted 
to  rigorous  investigation  and  statistics  for  informa- 
tion, but  the  moral  deterioration  of  the  race  arising 
from  these  wrongs  to  women  can  not  be  estimated  by 
figures.  In  teaching,  the  only  absolute  equality  of 
wages  between  man  and  woman  is  found  in  the  Cher- 
okee nation  of  Indians.  The  civilization  of  the  Indian 
tribes  is  a  question  of  woman's  education  and  free- 
dom. The  world  still  holds  a  mistaken  idea  of  force 
and  power,  those  questions  not  so  fully  pertaining  to 
the  physical  as  to  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  parts 
of  the  being.  The  "New  York  Nation"  recently  said, 
It  is  absolutely  essential  to  the  preservation  of  the  dig- 
nity and  independence  of  women  that  they  should  be 
on  a  par  with  men  as  regards  property  and  education, 
the  two  things  that  in  modern  times  have  supplanted 
physical  force  as  elements  of  power. 

Real  estate  possesses  more  power  as  property  than 
either  money  or  jewels.  The  real  strength  of  Ameri- 
can civilization  lies  in  the  fact  that  almost  every 
family  owns  its  home.  Permanent  national  strength 
lies  in  the  division  of  realty.  In  England  women 
are  more  rapidly  becoming  part  of  the  governing 
class  than  in  the  United  States,  and  in  that  country 
one-seventh  of    the   landed    property  owners   are  wo- 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  463 

men.  These  facts  should  be  borne  in  mind  in  regard 
to  the  civilization  of  the  native  races  of  America.  It 
is  through  the  Indian  women  that  the  problem  of  their 
civilization  must  be  answered;  the  title  in  fee  simple 
to  lands  should  be  in  the  hands  of  the  women. 

The  union  of  the  state  with  the  church  in  the  enforce- 
ment of  man's  "curse"  upon  woman  is  most  forcibly 
shown  by  a  decision  of  the  New  York  Court  of  Appeals 
rendered  early  in  1892  which  held  that  the  services 
of  a  wife  belong  to  the  husband  and  that  she  cannot 
recover  wages  from  him  even  if  holding  his  written 
promise  to  pay.  This  decision  like  that  of  the 
Agar-Ellis  case  in  England,  was  upon  the  principle 
that  the  wife  is  so  fully  under  subjection  to  her  hus- 
band as  to  incapacitate  her  from  making  a  contract 
even  with  that  husband.  In  all  the  wife's  relations  to 
the  husband  she  is  regarded  as  a  being  without  re- 
sponsibility. The  case  upon  which  this  decision  rested 
is  this:  A  woman  fell  down  a  coal-hole  and  sued  for 
damages,  recovering  $500.  The  defendant  asked  for 
a  new  trial  upon  the  ground  that  the  woman  was  work- 
ing for  her  husband  and  the  court  had  taken  into  ac- 
count her  loss  of  wages.  The  services  of  the  wife  be- 
longing to  the  hsuband,  her  claim  for  lost  wages  was 
a  fraud.  But  this  decision  of  the  Court  of  Appeals 
doubtless  will  not  interfere  with  the  power  of  the 
husband  to  recover  damages  for  loss  of  her  time  by 
reason  of  this  injury  which  deprived  him  of  her  ser- 
vices. The  decision  of  the  Court  recognized  the  right 
of  the  husband  to  compel  the  wife  to  perform  house- 
hold duties  for  him.  When  in  England,  1880, — the 
married  woman's  property  rights  bill  was  before  par- 
liament, a  commission  of  inquiry  was  sent  to  New 
York  to  learn  the  effect  of  securing  the  control  of  their 


464  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

own  property  to  married  women.  Under  various 
amendments  since  the  first  passage  of  this  act  in  1848, 
the  legislature  of  New  York  has  farther  secured  to 
married  women  the  right  of  making  wills,  of  collecting 
wages  for  work,  and  of  entering  business  outside  of 
the  household,  the  proceeds  belonging  entirely  to  her- 
self. But  under  this  decision  of  the  Court  of  Appeals, 
the  ground  was  taken  that  the  wife  cannot  collect 
wages  from  the  husband,  and  that  household  work 
for  him  is  compulsory  upon  her.*  This  decision 
as  to  compulsory  housework  controverts  that  other 
right  rscognized  by  legislation,  of  entering  into  business, 
doing  work  outside  of  the  home,  the  proceeds  to  be- 
long solely  to  herself.  Under  this  decision  of  the 
Court  of  Appeals,  a  wife  can  be  compelled  to  work 
for  the  husband  in  the  house  without  wages,  and  is 
debarred  from  all  outside  business. 

St.  Augustine  in    his  "City    of  God,"     taunts  Rome 
th  having  caused  her  own  downfall  by  her  treatment 
.  her  slaves.      He   speaks  of    the  slaves  as   miserable 
,eings  put  to  labor  only  fit  for    the  beasts  of  the  field 
and  even  degraded  below    them;   their    condition   had 
brought  Rome    to    its  own    destruction.      But    Roman 
wives  were  not  forced   to    labor.     The  peace  made  by 
the  Sabines  with    the    Romans    after   the   forcible  ab- 
duction of  the  Sabine  maidens,  had  for  one  of  its  pro- 
visions that  no   labor  except    spinning    should    be  re- 
quired from  wives.      Among    both  the    ancient  Greeks 
and  Romans,  the  woman  about    to   become    a  mother, 

4.  "The  New  York  Court  of  Appeals  has  rendered  an  opinion  which  shows  that 
married  women  in  that  state  are  still  in  bondage.  A  woman  fell  down  a  coal-hole 
and  sued  for  damages,  recovering  $500.  The  defendant  asked  for  a  new  trial  on 
the  ground  that  the  woman  was  working  for  her  husband  and  the  court  had  taken 
into  account  her  loss  of  wages.  The  Court  of  Appeals  reversed  the  decision  and 
sent  the  case  back  for  a  new  trial.  It  held  that  the  services  of  a  wife  belonged  to 
her  husband,  and  she  can  not  recover  any  wages  even  if  she  holds  his  written 
proniise  to  pay."— Chicago  Inter  Ocean.  Jan.  1892. 


WOMAN  AND  WORK  465 

as  heretofore  shown,  was  held  sacred;  she  was  exempt 
from  hard  labor  and  no  one  was  allowed  under  pen- 
alty of  punishment,  to  vex  or  disturb  her  mind. 

If  degrading  their  slaves  below  the  beasts  of  the 
field  led  to  the  destruction  of  Rome,  as  declared  by 
Augustine,  what  may  not  be  predicted  of  that  Chris- 
tian civilization  which  in  the  twentieth  century  of  its 
existence  degrades  women  and  children  to  such  labors 
as  he  declared  unfit  for  the  slaves  of  ancient  Rome, 
suitable  only  for  the  beasts  of  the  field;  which  har- 
nesses them  by  side  of  cows,  asses  and  dogs  to  do  the 
most  menial  work,  which  robs  them  in  wages  and 
stints  them  in  food  in  the  name  of  "religion? " 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY. 

While  under  advancing  civilization,  a  recognition 
of  the  religious  rights  of  woman  is  steadily  progress- 
ing among  people  at  large,  it  requires  but  slight  in- 
vestigation to  prove  that  olden  church  theories  regard- 
ing her  not  only  came  into  the  reformation,  but  large- 
ly remain  the  same  to-day.  The  Christianity  of  the 
ages  having  taught  the  existence  of  a  superior  and 
an  inferior  sex  possessing  different  rights  in  the  Chris- 
tian Church,  held  accountable  to  different  codes  of 
morals,  it  is  not  strange  that  we  do  not  find  morality 
to  have  been  more  of  a  fundamental  principle  among 
the  pastors  of  early  Protestant  churches  than  in  the 
Catholic  priesthood.  The  doctrine  of  "Once  in  grace, 
always  in  grace,"  carries  with  it  a  plea  for  vice,  and 
the  early  experience  of  strict  Calvinistic  Scotland  was 
much  that  of  mediaeval  Catholic  Europe.  The  Pres- 
byterian Conventicles1  early  bore  an  extremely  evil 
reputation.  The  fact  that  ministers  of  the  reformed 
church  were  permitted  marriage  did  not  change  priestly 
teaching  that  woman  was  created    solely  for  man,  and 

i.  Generally  these  conventicles  produced  very  many  bastards,  and  the  excuse 
they(the  minis«crs)made  for  that, was,  "where  sin  abounds  the  Grace  of  God  super_ 
abounds;  there  is  no  condemnation  in  those  that  are  in  Christ."  Sometimes  this. 
'The  lambs  of  God  may  sport  together;  to  the  pure  all  things  are  pure."  Nay, 
generally  they  arc  of  opinion  that  a  man  is  never  a  true  saint  till  he  have  a  fall 
like  that  of  David  with  Bathsheba,  The  true  character  of  the  Presbyterian  Pastors 
and  People  of  Scotland,  Reign  of  King  Charles  II— and  since  the  Revolution,  p. 
12. 

466 


THE  CHURCH   OF  TO-DAY  467 

they  found  apologies  in  the  Bible  for  illicit  conduct. 
These  Protestant  clergymen  taught,  as  had  the  Cath- 
olic, that  a  priest  was  incapable  of  sinning;  and  from 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  "To  the  pure  all  things  are 
pure, "  was  quoted  in  proof  of  this  assertion.  Even  when 
under  circumstances  of  great  personal  peril  and  danger 
to  life,  the  trust  of  parishioners  in  the  morality  of 
their  shepherds  was  often  abused;  of  this,  Rev.  David 
Williamson,  one  of  the  most  eminent  Presbyterian 
ministers  of  Edinburgh,  was  a  conspicuous  example. 
In  defense  of  his  immorality  Mr.  Williamson  said, 
"Verily,  I  do  not  deny  that  with  St.  Paul  I  have  a 
law  in  my  members  warring  against  the  law  of  my 
mind,  and  bringing  me  into  captivity  unto  the  love  of 
sin  which  is  in  my  members."  The  strangest  sermons, 
most  insulting  to  woman  and  too  indecorous  for  quo- 
tation, were  constantly  preached:  while  her  inferiority 
and  incapacity  for  understanding  even  the  gospel 
was  also  as  constantly  declared  from  the  pulpit.  An 
old  Presbyterian  preacher,  Rev.  David  Douglas,  dis- 
covering a  woman  weeping  in  the  kirk,  pointed  toward 
her,  crying,  "Wife,  what  makes  you  weep?  I  am  sure 
thou  understandeth  not  what  I  am  saying;  my  dis- 
course is  directed  to  the  brethren  and  not  to  the  like 
of  you."  The  present  century,  with  all  its  enlighten- 
ment does  not  cease  to  give  us  glimpses  of  that 
favorite  mediaeval  doctrine  that  "sin  can  be  killed 
with  sin  as  the  best  way  of  becoming  innocent  again," 
and  its  concomitant,  that  it  is  impossible  for  a  person 
in    grace    to    commit  sin.2     The  doctrines  of   holiness 

2.  Mr.  Mott  a  member  of  the  Salvation  army  in  Syracuse,  having  led  astray 
another  member,  a  young  girl  of  seventeen  and  being  requested  to  do  her  the 
justice  of  marrying  her,  replies  that  he  has  a  great  mission  in  converting  the 
world  and  has  no  time  for  marrying.  He  took  an  active  part  in  the  salvation 
meeting  the  other  night.  He  says  he  was  doing  as  Jesus  did,  and  was  free  from 
sin.    He  carried  the  flag  in  the  streets  and  prayed  three  times.    There  was  great 


468  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

and  entire  sanctification,  taught  by  some  sects  to  day, 
and  the  theory  that  all  experience  is  necessary  in  order 
to  a  full  development  of  character,  are  of  the  same 
nature.  Eastern  "Wisdom  Religion"  declares  that  a 
person  can  become  neither  God  nor  deva  without 
passing  through  all  experience,  returning  again  and 
again  to  earth  for  this  purpose. 

The  departure  of  the  soul  atom  from  the  bosom  of 
the  Divinity  is  a  radiation  from  the  life  of  the  Great 
All,  who  expends  his  strength  in  order  that  he  may 
grow  again  and  live  by  its  return.  God  thereby  ac- 
quires new  vital  force,  provided  by  all  the  transforma- 
tion that  the  soul-atom  has  undergone.  Its  return  is 
its  final  reward.  Such  is  the  secret  of  the  evolution 
of  the  Great    Being  and  of  the  Supreme  Soul.8 

Directions  for  seeking  out  the  way: 

Seek  it  not  by  any  one  road,  to  each  temperament 
there  is  one  road  which  seems  the  most  desirable. 
But  the  way  is  not  found  by  devotion  alone,  by  relig- 
ious contemplation  alone,  by  ardent  progress,  by  self- 
sacrificing  labor,  by  studious  observation  of  life. 
None  can  take  the  disciple  more  than  one  step  on- 
ward. All  steps  are  necessary  to  make  up  the  ladder, 
one  by  one,  as  they  are  surmounted.  The  virtues  of 
men  are  steps  indeed,  necessary — not  by  any  means  to 
be  dispensed  with.  Yet,  though  they  create  a  fine 
atmosphere  and  happy  future,  they  are  useless  if  they 
stand  alone.  The  whole  nature  of  man  must  be  used 
wisely  by  the  one  who  desires  to  enter  the  way.  Each 
man  is  to  himself  absolutely  the  way,  the  truth  and 
the  life.  Seek  it  by  plunging  into  the  mysterious  and 
glorious  depths  of  your  own  inmost  being.  Seek  it  by 
testing  all  experience,  by  utilizing  the  senses  in  order 
to  understand  the  growth  and  meaning  of  individuality 
and  the  beauty  and  obscurity  of  those  other  divine  frag- 
ments which  are  struggling  side  by  side  with  you,  and 
form  the  race  to  which  you  belong.* 

disorder  and  indignation  at  Mott's  impudence  in  praying  and  speaking.— Syra- 
cuse Daily  Standard.  1883. 

3.  The  Book  o/Pitris. 

4.  Light  on  the  Path, 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  469 

The  Catholic  and  Calvinistic  doctrines  of  woman's 
inferiority  of  position  and  intellect  taught  from  the 
pulpit,  are  by  no  means  relegated  to  past  centuries, 
but  continue  to  be  publicly  taught  by  the  Protestant 
clergy  of  every  sect,  as  fully  as  by  their  Catholic  and 
Greek  brethren.  The  first  National  Woman  Suffrage 
Convention  which  assembled  in  Washington,  1869,  hav- 
ing invited  Rev.  Chaplain  Gray,  of  the  House,  to 
open  its  proceedings  with  prayer,  he  referred  in  this 
petition  to  woman  as  an  after-thought  of  the  Creator, 
an  inferior  and  secondary  being,  called  into  existence 
for  the  special  benefit  of  man.  The  noble  old  Qua- 
keress, Lucretia  Mott,  sitting  in  an  attitude  of  devout 
attention,  suddenly  raised  her  head,  and  at  close  of 
the  prayer,  Bible  in  hand,  she  read  aloud  the  account 
of  the  creation,  Genesis  I.  27-28,  woman  and  man 
equals,  both  having  been  given  dominion  over  nature. 
The  thirtieth  anniversary  of  the  first  public  demand 
of  woman  for  the  recognition  of  her  equality  of  right 
with  man,  held  in  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  July  18,  1878, 
passed  a  series  of  resolutions5  asserting  woman's  equal- 
ity and  religious  rights  with  man.  Three  of  these 
proved  especially  obnoxious  to  the  clergy  of  the  coun- 
try, in  declaring  the  first  duty  of  every  individual  to 
be  self  development;  the  duty  of  every  woman  to  be 
guided  by  her  own  reason  rather  than  the  authority  of 
another;  and  that  it  was  owing  to  the  perversion  of 
the  religious  element  in  woman  that  she  had  been  so 
completely  subjugated  to  priestcraft  and  superstition. 

Resolved:  That  as  the  first  duty  of  every  individual 
is  self  development,  the  lessons  of  self-sacrifice  and 
obedience  taught  to  woman  by  the  Christian  church 
have  been  fatal,  not  only  to  her  own  vital  interests, 
but  through  her,  to  those  of  the  race. 

5.     Mrs.  Gage,  Chairman  0/  the  Resolution  Committee. 


47°  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Resolved:  That  the  great  principle  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation,  the  right  of  individual  conscience  and 
judgment  heretofore  exercised  by  men  alone,  should 
now  be  claimed  by  woman;  that,  in  the  interpretation 
of  Scripture,  she  should  be  guided  by  her  own  reason, 
and  not  by  the  authority  of  the  church. 

Resolved:  That  it  is  through  the  perversion  of  the 
religious  element  in  woman — playing  upon  her  hopes 
and  fears  of  the  future,  holding  this  life  with  all  its 
high  duties  in  abeyance  to  that  which  is  to  come — that 
she  and  the  children  she  has  borne  have  been  wrong- 
fully subjugated  by  priestcraft  and  superstition. 

These  resolutions  immediately  called  forth  a  sermon 
in  opposition  from  the  Rev.  A.  H.  Strong,  D.  D.,  pres- 
ident of  the  Rochester  Theological  Seminary  (Baptist,) 
in  which  he  said: 

She  is  subordinate  to  man  in  office,  she  is  to  be 
helper,  not  principal.  Therefore  man  has  precedence 
in  the  order  of  creation,  woman  is  made  of  man,  and 
to  supply  the  felt  need  of  man.  The  race,  therefore, 
is  called  the  race  of  man  and  not  the  race  of  womafn. 
For  this  office  of  subordination  and  whether  they  assert 
it  or  not,  women  are  fitted  by  their  very  constitution, 
and  in  the  very  creation  of  mankind  in  the  garden  of 
beauty  undefiled  by  the  slimy  track  of  the  serpent  as 
it  was,  God  ordained  the  subordination  of  woman  and 
the  differences  of  nature  that  makes  her  subordination 
inevitable.  The  power  of  rule  seems  to  me  to  have 
been  invested  in  the  head  of  the  family  that  he  may 
act  for  them,  or  rather  that  they  may  act  through 
him. 

The  assertion  of  this  theologian  that  "the  race  there- 
fore is  called  the  race  of  man  and  not  the  race  of  wo- 
man," is  of  the  same  character  as  that  of  Inquisitor 
Sprenger  in  regard  to  the  word  femina,  as  applied  to 
woman,  showing  the  intellectual  calibre  of  both  in- 
quisitor and  theologian  to  be  the  same.  But  in  their 
assertion    of  woman's    inferiority    and    subordination, 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  47 1 

neither  Chaplain  Gray  nor  President  Strong  proceeded 
quite  as  far  as  an  opposing  speaker  at  the  Philadel- 
phia Woman  Suffrage  Convention  of  1854,  who 
said,  "Let  woman  first  prove  that  she  has  a  soul,  both 
the  Bible  and  the  Church  deny  it."  Here  we  are  set 
back  to  the  Macon  Council  of  the  sixth  century, 
which  debated  the  question  of  woman's    humanity. 

That  the  church  of  the  nineteenth  century  pos- 
sesses the  same  character  as  that  of  the  fourteenth, 
the  twelfth,  the  fifth,  was  forcibly  illustrated  during 
the  early  days  of  the  anti-slavery  struggle,  especially 
in  its  persecution  of  the  women  who  took  part  in  that 
reform.  Lucretia  Mott  and  Esther  Moore  were  integ- 
ral members  of  the  American  Anti-slavery  Society, 
having  assisted  in  the  convention  which  organized 
this  society  in  1833.  Shortly  afterward  the  Grimke 
sisters  of  South  Carolina,  Sarah  and  Angelina,  con- 
vinced of  the  sinfulness  of  slavery,  left  their  delight- 
ful home  in  Charleston,  and  coming  North,  spoke 
eloquently  through  Massachusetts  against  those 
wrongs  of  which  they  themselves  had  been  wit- 
nesses. The  church,  becoming  frightened  at  woman's 
increasing  power  and  influence,  determined  to  crush 
her  work.  Its  action  began  with  the  Orthodox  Con- 
gregational, at  that  time  the  largest  and  most  influen- 
tial ecclesiastical  body  of  Massachusetts,  and  in  1837 
the  General  Association  of  Massachusetts  issued  a 
pastoral  letter  calling  upon  all  "churches  under  their 
care"  to  defend  themselves  by  closing  their  doors 
against  the  abolitionists,  who  had  set  aside  the  laws 
of  God  by  welcoming  women  to  their  platforms  and 
allowing  them  to  speak  in  public;6  section  third  was  the 

6.  Both  Marie  Weston  Chapman,  and  Whittier,  immortalized  this  letter  in 
verse,  Mrs.  Chapman  by  a  spirited  poem  entitled:  "The  Times  that  try  Men's 
souls,"  and  Whittier  in  one  called  "A  Pastoral  Letter." 


472  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

most  significant  portion  of  this  pastoral  letter. 

III.  We  invite  your  attention  to  the  dangers 
which  at  present  seem  to  threaten  the  female  character 
with  wide  spread  and  permanent  injury. 

The  appropriate  duties  and  influence  of  woman  are 
clearly  stated  in  the  New  Testament.  Those  duties 
and  that  influence  are  unobtrusive  and  private,  but 
the  source  of  mighty  power.  When  the  mild,  depend- 
ent, softening  influence  of  woman  under  the  sternness 
of  man's  opinions  is  fully  exercised,  society  feels  the 
effects  of  it  in  a  thousand  forms.  The  power  of  wo- 
man is  her  dependence,  flowing  from  the  conscious- 
ness of  that  weakness  which  God  has  given  her  for 
her  protection,  and  which  keeps  her  in  those  depart- 
ments of  life  that  form  the  character  of  individuals 
and  of  the  nation.  There  are  social  influences  which 
females  use  in  promoting  piety  and  the  great  objects 
of  Christian  benevolence  which  we  cannot  too  highly 
commend.  We  appreciate  the  unostentatious  prayers 
and  efforts  of  woman  in  advancing  the  cause  of  relig- 
ion at  home  and  abroad;  in  Sabbath  schools;  in  lead- 
ing religious  inquirers  to  the  pastors  for  instruction; 
and  in  all  such  associated  effort  as  becomes  the  mod- 
esty of  her  sex;  and  earnestly  hope  that  she  may 
abound  more  and  more  in  these  labors  of  piety  and 
love. 

But  when  she  assumes  the  place  and  tone  of  man  as 
a  public  reformer,  our  care  and  protection  of  her 
seem  unnecessary;  we  put  ourselves  in  self-defense 
against  her;  she  yields  the  power  which  God  has  given 
her  for  her  protection,  and  her  character  becomes  un- 
natural. If  the  vine  whose  strength  and  beauty  is  to 
lean  upon  the  trellis  work,  and  half  conceal  its  clus- 
ters, thinks  to  assume  the  independence  and  the  over- 
shadowing nature  of  the  elm,  it  will  not  only  cease  to 
bear  fruit,  but  fall  in    shame    and    dishonor    into  the 

This  "Clerical  Bull"  was  fulminated  with  special  reference  to  those  two  noble 
South  Carolina  women,  Sarah  M.  and  Angelina  E.  Grimke,  who  were  at  that  time 
publicly  pleading  for  those  in  bonds  as  bound  with  them,  while  on  a  visit  to 
Massachusetts.  It  was  written  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Nehemiah  Adams,  of  Boston, 
author  of  "A  South-side  View  of  Slavery." 


THE  CHURCH   OF  TO-DAY  473 

dust.  We  cannot,  therefore,  but  regret  the  mistaken 
conduct  of  those  who  encourage  females  to  bear  an  ob- 
trusive and  ostentatious  part  in  measures  of  reform, 
and  countenance  any  of  that  sex  who  so  far  forget 
themselves  as  to  itinerate  in  the  character  of  public 
lecturers  and  teachers.  We  especially  deplore  the 
intimate  acquaintance  and  promiscuous  conversation 
of  females  with  regard  to  things  which  ought  not  to 
be  named;  by  which  that  modesty  and  delicacy  which 
is  the  charm  of  domestic  life,  and  which  constitutes 
the  true  influence  of  woman  in  society  is  consumed, 
and  the  way  opened,  as  we  apprehend,  for  degeneracy 
and  ruin. 

We  say  these  things  not  to  discourage  proper  in- 
fluences against  sin,  but  to  secure  such  reformation  as 
we  believe  is  scriptural,  and  will  be  permanent. 

That  we  may  rightly  judge  the  character  of  this 
pastoral  letter,  it  must  be  remembered,  that  no  dis- 
cussion upon  what  is  known  as  "the  woman  question" 
took  place  at  those  meetings,  which  were  entirely  de- 
voted to  the  southern  slave.  This  letter  was  written 
by  men,  emanating  from  a  body  of  christian  people 
that  sustained  colored  slavery  as  an  institution  upon 
which  God  had  as  equally  placed  his  sanction,  as  upon 
the  subordination  of  woman.  To  such  extent  have 
the  conscience  and  will  been  under  the  bondage  of  the 
priesthood,  that  the  more  timid  members  of  the  anti- 
slavery  society  became  frightened,  even  some  of  those 
who  believed  in  woman's  equality  advising  these 
speakers  to  yield  their  rights  in  the  meetings, 
lest  the  ministers  who  had  joined  them 
should  withdraw,  taking  others  with  them.  Thus 
priestly  intolerance  and  the  timidity  of  anti-slavery 
men,  had  the  effect  of  silencing  the  philanthropic  and 
eloquent  Grimke  sisters7,   in  their   efforts  for  the  free- 

7.  No  man  who  remembers  1837  and  its  lowering  clouds  will  deny  that  there 
was  hardly  any  contribution  to  the  anti-slavery  movement  greater  or  more  im- 
pressive than  the  crusade  of  these  Grimke  sisters  from  South  Carolina  through 
the  New  England  States.—  Wendell  Phillips. 


474  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

dom  of  the  slave.  After  ten  month's  work,  their  voices 
were  heard  no  more.  These  sisters  were  not  only  per- 
secuted in  the  North,  under  ban  of  the  church,  but  in 
the  South  the  State  united  with  the  Church,  and  by  a 
decree  of  the  city  of  Charleston  they  were  rendered 
permanent  exiles  from  home,  and  informed  that  should 
they  return  despite  this,  they  would  not  be  able  to 
escape  personal  violence  from  a  mob.  With  one 
noble  exception,  this  mandate  of  the  church  and 
clergy  had  effect  for  a  time  in  silencing  woman's  plea 
for  the  slave.  For  seven  long  years  the  voice  of  but 
one  woman,  that  of  Abby  Kelly,8  was  heard  upon  the 
anti-slavery  platform,  and  the  persecutions  of  the 
church  made  her  life  one  long  martyrdom;  her  appeals 
for  the  slave  were  met  by  mob  violence,  furious  howls, 
cries,  and  the  vilest  language  being  supplemented  by 
more  material  efforts  for  silencing  her  voice.  Were 
these  proceedings  not  so  thoroughly  substantiated,  the 
time  so  shortly  past,  credence  could  not  be  given  as 
to  the  means  used  against  this  noble  woman  to  pre- 
vent her  pleading  for  those  so  greatly  wronged.9 
Ministers  of  high  standing  assailed  her  from  the  pul- 
pit, a  favorite  text  being,  "Revelations"2-2o.  I  "have 
a  few  things  against  thee,  because  thou  suffereth  that 
woman,  Jezebel,  which  calleth  herself  a  prophetess,  to 
teach  and  seduce  my  servants  to  commit  fornication." 
Not  alone  the  Congregational  body,  but  all  Christian 
sects,  were  imbued  with  the  same  persecuting  spirit,  a 
Methodist  presiding  elder  characterizing  the  Garrison- 
ian  societies,  as  no  longer  anti-slavery,  but  "no-gov- 
ernment, no-sabbath,  no-church,  no-bible,  no-marriage, 
woman's  rights  societies." 

8.  Who  afterwards  married  Stephen  Foster,  one  of  the  apostles  of  the  anti- 
slavery  cause. 

9.  Decomposed  eggs,  the  contents  of  stables,  and  even  of  outhouses,  were 
hurled  at  the  speaker  and  those  assembled  to  listen. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  475 

That  woman  had  assumed  the  right  to  speak  in 
public  for  the  oppressed  was  the  origin  of  all  this 
vituperation.  Its  real  cause  was  of  the  same  nature  as 
that  which  laid  30,000  heads  low,  at  St.  Bartholomew, 
that  woman's  voice  had  been  heard  in  public  contrary 
to  the  teaching  of  the  church.  It  was  perhaps  fore- 
seen that  she  might,  as  really  at  a  later  period  was 
done,  draw  a  vivid  illustration  of  the  similitude  be- 
tween the  condition  of  the  white  wife  and  the  black 
slave.10  The  unity  and  peace  of  the  World's  Anti- 
slavery  Convention,  London,  1840,  was  disturbed  by 
the  hostility  of  several  clergymen,  and  a  few  bigoted 
laymen  of  the  same  spirit,  who  objected  to  the  recog- 
nition of  the  women  delegates  sent  by  several  Ameri- 
can societies,  among  whom  were  Lucretia  Mott  and 
Esther  Moore,  members  of  the  parent  organization. 
After  a  spirited  discussion  their  admission  was  decid- 
ed to  be  a  violation  of  the  ordinances  of  Almighty  God, 
and  their  credentials  were  rejected.11 

10.  Rev.  Samuel  J.  May  first  had  his  attention  called  to  the  wrongs  of  women 
under  Church  and  State  by  a  striking  comparison  of  the  two  from  the  lips  of  a 
woman. 

Priestly  opposition  to  new  ideas,  and  to  woman's  taking  part  in  reform  work, 
still  continues  to  be  manifest,  as  shown  by  the  tour  of  General  Weaver  and  Mrs. 
Lease,  through  the  Southern  States  in  the  fall  of  1892.  "The  notorious  Mrs 
Lease,"  as  she  was  termed,  was  met  by  hooting,  howling,  egg-throwing  mobs,  and 
in  Atlanta  "an  eminent  minister  of  the  strongest  religious  denomination  (Baptist) 
in  the  South"  preached  against  the  third  party,  September  18th,  five  days  before 
that  on  which  General  Weaver  and  Mrs.  Lease  were  to  speak  in  that  city.  This 
sermon,  reported  by  the  Constitution,  as  a  "red-hot  roasting"  declared  against 
the  political  party  that  would  employ  women  as  speakers,  "unsex  American 
women,"  as  an  evidence  of  the  skepticism  of  the  age.  Nor  is  this  the  only  recent 
instance  of  pulpit  opposition  to  woman.  After  the  formation  of  the  Woman's 
National  Liberal  League,  Washington,  February  1890,  clergymen  in  different  por- 
tions of  the  country— Washington,  Iowa,  Massachusetts,  etc.,  hurled  their  anathe- 
mas against  this  association,  as  inimical  to  Bible  morality,  and  especially  against 
the  women  leading  in  this  step.  In  addition  to  these  sermons,  a  Catholic  Orphan- 
age of  seven  hundred  children,  was  instructed  to  pray  against  such  demoralizing 
ideas;  and  beyond  this,  letters  passing  between  influential  women  fell  under 
United  States  supervision,  and  were  opened  in  transit. 

11.  Lucretia  Mott  foremost  among  these  delegates,  after  this  rejection  decided 


47&  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

In  1843,  the  Hopkinson  Association  of  Congrega- 
tional Divines,  of  New  Hampshire,  unanimously  en- 
acted a  statute  in  opposition  to  women  opening  their 
lips  in  church,  even  to  "sigh"  or  "groan"  in  contrition  j 
doubtless  agreeing  with  Minister  Douglas,  that  they 
were  incapable  of  understanding  a  discourse  directed 
to  the  brethren,  who  alone  were  allowed  to  shout 
"Amen,"  "Bless  the  Lord,"  and  "Glory."  By  a  strange 
inconsistency  women  were  still  allowed  to  sing  "under 
men  as  leaders."  This  statute  of  restriction  declar- 
ed: 

"But,  as  to  leading  men,  either  in  instruction  or  de- 
votion, and  as  to  any  interruption  or  disorder  in  relig- 
ious meetings,  'Let  your  women  keep  silence  in  the 
churches;'  not  merely  let  them  be  silent,  but  let  them 
keep  or  preserve  silence.  Not  that  they  may  not 
preach,  or  pray,  or  exhort  merely,  but  they  may  not 
open  their  lips  to  utter  any  sounds  audibly.  Let  not 
your  women  in  promiscuous  religious  meetings  preach 
or  pray  audibly,  or  exhort  audibly,  or  sigh,  or  groan, 
or  say  Amen,  or  utter  the  precious  words,  'Bless  the 
Lord,'  or  the  enchanting  sounds,  'Glory  I  Glory!'" 

In  1888,  forty-five  years  after  this  statute,  Rev.  Dr. 
Theodore  L.  Cuyler  in  the  "New  York  Evangelist," 
gave  his  opinion  in  regard  to  woman's  action  in  re- 
form work  and  her  demand  for  a  share  in  making 
the  laws  which  govern  her,  in  this  wise: 

"We  can  say  frankly  to  our  temperance  brethren,  that 
if  they  attempt  to  lash  the  wise  project  of  prohibition 
of  saloons,  and  the  foolish  project  of  female  suffrage 
inseparably  together,  they  will  encounter  fatal  opposi- 
tion. They  will  repel  tenfold  more  sensible  voters 
than  they  will  win.  Their  most  eloquent  and  logical 
advocate,  Dr.  Herrick  Johnson,  is  intensely  opposed  to 
the  Lucy  Stone  and  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  doctrines  of 

upon  holding  a  Woman's  Rights  Convention,  upon  her  return  to  America,  which 
should  present  the  wrongs  under  which  women  suffered.  This  was  done,  1848,  at 
Seneca  Falls,  N.  Y. 


THE  CHURCH   OF  TO-DAY  477 

woman  suffrage,  as  I  am.  Nineteen-twentieths  of  our 
Presbyterian  ministers  will  never  cast  a  vote  which 
is  nominally  only  for  prohibition,  and  yet  is  really  a 
vote  for  burdening  womanhood  with  civil  government. 
What  is  true  of  our  church  is  true  of  the  Episcopal, 
Reformed,  Baptist,  Congregationalist,  and  the  most 
influential  portion  of  the  Methodist  church." 

The  same  year  of  President  Strong's  opposing  ser- 
mon, 1878,  the  United  Presbyterian  Assembly  passed 
a  resolution  to  the  effect  that  they  found  no  sufficient 
authority  in  Scripture  to  warrant  the  ordination  of 
women  as  deacons,  yet  they  might  with  profit  to 
themselves,  and  great  advantage  to  the  cause  of  suffer- 
ing humanity,  and  for  Christ,  be  allowed  to  act  as  as- 
sistants to  deacons,  thus  emphasizing  the  dominant 
church  teaching  of  woman's  irresponsibility  and 
secondary  position  to  man.  The  same  year,  however, 
an  advance  step  was  taken  in  Europe,  the  Synod  of 
Born  (Old  Catholic,)  following  the  example  of  Pere 
Hyacinth,  adopted  a  resolution  in  favor  of  the  mar- 
riage of  the  clergy  by  a  vote  of  76  to  22.  At  the  same 
time  the  Old  Catholics  were  taking  this  advance  step, 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Diocesan  Convention  of 
South  Carolina  forbade  woman's  voting  upon  church 
matters,  although  it  was  proven  during  the  discussion 
that  in  some  parishes  there  were  but  five  male  mem- 
bers. The  Southern  Baptist  Convention,  held  in 
Savannah,  Georgia,  1885,  appointed  a  committee  with 
title  of,  and  whose  business  was  to  decide  upon  "Rep- 
resentation by  Women"  in  church  affairs.  This  com- 
mittee reported  in  favor  of  the  word  "brethren"  in- 
stead of  "members"  being  incorporated  in  the  consti- 
tution, thus  confirming  the  right  of  man  alone  to  take 
part  in  church  councils.  Having  thus  effectively  clos- 
ed the  lips   of  women  on    discussion  of    church  ques- 


478  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

tions,  the  convention  introduced  a  resolution  on 
divorce12  followed  by  a  speech  declaring  that  but  one 
cause  could  exist.  The  convention  having  shut  off  all 
chance  for  woman's  opinion  upon  this  question  of  equal 
and  even  of  more  vital  interest  to  her,  "applaudingly 
and  overwhelmingly  adopted  the  resolution."  At  the 
annual  election  for  officers  of  Christ  Church,  New 
Haven,  Connecticut,  April  1886,  a  discussion  arose 
upon  the  right  of  women  to  become  members  of  the 
society  and  consequently  voters  it  in.  Several  ladies 
having  signified  a  desire  to  unite  with  the  society, 
Bishop  Williams  was  consulted  as  to  their  admission; 
he  decided  the  Canon  was  clearly  against  them,  and  on 
motion  of  the  clerk  their  application  was  rejected, 
only  one  member  speaking  in  favor. 

The  title  of  the  sermons  still  preached  upon  woman, 
illustrate  priestly  thought  regarding  her.  Among 
those  of  recent  date  are  found,  "Blighted  Women;" 
"Sins  of  Women;"  "Women  and  Divorce;"  "Women 
and  Skepticism;"  "Woman's  Place  and  Work;"  "Our 
Common  Mother;"  "The  Relation  of  Husband  and 
Wife;"  "Marriage  and  Divorce;"  "The  Sphere  of 
Woman;"  "Husband  and  Wife;"  "A  Mission  for 
Women;"  "The  Church  and  the  Family;"  "The 
Duties  of  Wives  to  Husbands;"  these  sermons  all 
subordinating  woman  to  man  in  every  relation  of  life; 
all  designed  to  repress  woman's  growing  tendency 
towards  freedom,  and  her  claim  for  the  same  oppor- 
tunities in  life  conceded  to  man.  That  the  cleri- 
cal teaching  of  woman's  subordination  to  man  was  not 
alone  a  doctrine  of  the  dark  ages,  is  proven  by  the 
most  abundant  testimony  of  to-day.  The  famous  See 
trial  of  1876,  which  shook  not  only  the   Presbytery   of 

12.    Through  Senator  Joseph  E.  Brown. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  479 

Newark,  but  the  whole  Synod  of  New  Jersey,  and  fi- 
nally the  General  Presbyterian  Assembly  of  the  United 
States,  was  based  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  divinely 
appointed  subordination  of  woman  to  man,  and  arose 
simply  because  Rev.  Dr.  Isaac  See  admitted  two 
ladies  to  his  pulpit  to  speak  upon  temperance;  Rev. 
Dr.  Craven,  the  prosecutor,  declared  this  act  to  have 
been  "an  indecency  in  the  sight  of  Jehovah."  He 
expressed  the  general  clerical  and  church  view,  when 
he  said: 

I  believe  the  subject  involves  the  honor  of  my  God. 
I  believe  the  subject  involves  the  headship  and  crown 
of  Jesus.  Woman  was  made  for  man  and  became 
first  in  the  transgression.  My  argument  is  that  subor- 
dination is  natural,  the  subordination  of  sex.  Dr.  See 
has  admitted  marital  subordination,  but  this  is  not 
enough;  there  exists  a  created  subordination;  a 
divinely  arranged  and  appointed  subordination  of 
woman  as  woman  to  man  as  man.  Woman  was  made 
for  man  and  became  first  in  the  transgression.  The 
proper  condition  of  the  adult  female  is  marriage;  the 
general  rule  for  ladies  is  marriage.  Women  without 
children,  it  might  be  said,  could  preach,  but  they  are 
under  the  general  rule  of  subordination.  It  is  not 
allowed  woman  to  speak  in  the  church.  Man's  place 
is  on  the  platform.  It  is  positively  base  for  a  woman 
to  speak  in  the  pulpit;  it  is  base  in  the  sight  of 
Jehovah.  The  whole  question  is  one  of  subordina- 
tion.13 

Thus  before  a  vast  audience  largely  composed  of 
women,  Dr.  Craven  stood  and  with  denunciatory  man- 
ner, frequently  bringing  his  fists  or  his  Bible  emphat- 
ically down,  devoted  a  four  hours  speech  to  proving 
that  the  Bible  taught  woman's  subordination  to   man. 

13.  Several  ladies  well  known  for  their  work  in  the  enfranchisement  of  their 
sex,  attended  this  trial,  the  New  York  Sun  facetiously  referring  to  the  presence  of 
"those  eminent  Presbyterians,  Lillie  Devereux  Blake,  Matilda  Joslyn  Gage  and 
Susan  A.  King." 


480  WOMAN,     CHURCH   AND    STATE 

His  arguments  were  the  same  as  those  of  the  church 
in  the  past  and  were  based  upon  the  same  theory,  viz. 
that  woman  was  created  inferior  to  man,  for  man,  and 
was  the  first  in  sin.  He  referred  to  the  fashions  as 
aid  in  his  argument,  saying.  "In  every  country, 
under  every  clime,  from  the  peasant  woman  of  Naples 
with  a  handkerchief  over  her  hair,  to  the  women 
before  me  with  bonnets,  every  one  wears  something 
upon  her  head  in  token  of  subordination."  Dr. 
Craven  made  this  statement  in  direct  contradiction  to 
historical  facts  which  prove  that  the  head  covering  is 
always  removed  in  presence  of  a  superior.  To  remain 
bareheaded  is  an  act  of  deference  to  a  higher  author- 
ity. Even  the  Quaker  custom  of  men's  wearing  the 
hat  in  meeting,  originated  as  an  act  of  defiance  to  the 
Anglican  Church.  Dr.  Craven  also  forgot  to  state 
that  flowing  hair  has  always  been  regarded  as  an  em- 
blem of  superiority  and  freedom;  clipped  hair  that  of 
a  slave  or  prisoner.  Thus  Dr.  Craven's  appeal  to 
fashion  re-acted  against  him  in  the  minds  of  all  histor- 
ically informed  persons,  yet  together  with  his  other 
statements  it  was  fully  endorsed  by  most  of  his 
brother  clergymen  present,  some  of  whom  enthusiast- 
ically shouted,  "Amen!"  At  the  close  of  his  speech 
several  other  clergymen  gave  their  views.  Dr.  Bal- 
lentine  considered  the  subject  too  simple  for  an  argu- 
ment. Dr.  Few  Smith,  although  he  "admired  Miss 
Smiley,  more  than  almost  any  orator  he  had  ever  list- 
ened to,  did  not  want  her  or  any  other  woman  to  per- 
manently occupy  the  Presbyterian  pulpit."  Dr.  Wil- 
son rejoiced  to  see  so  many  women  crowding  in  the 
lecture  room ;  but  Brother  See  should  not  take  all  the 
glory  to  himself.  He  was  glad  to  see  the  women  take 
so  deep   an    interest   in  the  subject  under    discussion; 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  48 1 

but  as  he  looked  at  them  he  asked  himself:  "What 
will  all  the  children  do  while  these  women  are  away 
from  home?"  A  decision  of  censure  against  Dr.  See, 
was  agreed  in  by  the  Synod  of  New  Jersey,  and  con- 
firmed by  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church  of  the  United  States,  in  session  at  Pitts- 
burg. 

Thus  we  find  that  the  Christianity  of  to-day  continues 
to  teach  the  existence  of  a  superior  and  an  inferior 
sex  in  the  church,  possessing  different  rights  and  held 
accountable  to  a  different  code  of  morals.  Not  alone 
did  Dr.  Craven  express  the  idea  that  woman's  very 
dress  was  typical  of  her  inferiority,  but  the  Right  Rev. 
Dr.  Coxe,  Bishop  of  the  Western  (Episcopal)  Diocese 
of  New  York  refused  the  sacrament  in  1868  to  the 
lady  patients  of  the  Clifton  Springs  sanitarium  whose 
heads  were  uncovered,  although  the  chapel  was  under 
the  same  roof  and  on  the  same  floor  with  the  patients' 
rooms.  This  same  Right  Rev.  Dr.  Coxe,  in  a  speech 
at  his  installation  as  first  president  of  the  Ingham 
Seminary  for  young  ladies,  declared  "the  laws  of  God 
to  be  plainly  Salic."  Rev.  W.  W.  Patten,  D.  D., 
president  of  Howard  University,  Washington,  D.  C, 
in  a  sermon  preached  at  the  Congregational  church, 
upon  "Woman  and  Skepticism,"  January,  1885,  ad- 
vanced the  proposition  that  as  soon  as  they  (women) 
depart  from  their  natural  sphere,  they  become  athe- 
istical and  immoral.14  In  March,  1891,  a  half  col- 
umn editorial  in  the  "Presbyterian"  discussed  the 
ethics  and  aesthetics  of  woman's  dress  at  communions, 
not  precisely  in  line  with  Dr.  Coxe,  yet  of  the  same 
general  character  as  to  regulating  woman's  dress,  in, 
"Should  women    receive    the  elements  at  communion 

14.     Report  of  the  Washington  D.  C  "Republican." 


482  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

with  gloved  hands?"  Some  authorities  objected  to  the 
practice  upon  the  ground  "that  nothing  might  come 
between  the  recipient  and  the  mystic  power  contained 
in  the  bread  and  wine  after  consecration  by  the  priest. 
But  while,  as  the  editor  remarks,  "It  is  after  all  a  very 
small  matter,"  it  is  in  a  historical  aspect,  a  great  one, 
showing  such  pronounced  change  from  the  church 
teaching  of  but  a  few  centuries  since,  when  women 
were  forbidden  to  take  the  eucharist  in  their  naked 
hands  because  of  their  impurity.  Rev.  Mr.  Denhurst, 
member  of  the  Connecticut  Legislature  (House),  dur- 
ing a  hearing  before  a  committee  upon  that  question 
March  10,  1886,  while  speaking  favorably  of  woman 
suffrage  still  betrayed  his  belief  in  the  old  theological 
idea  that  women  brought  sin  into  the  world,  through 
which  her  subordination  to  man  ensued.  But  like  Dr. 
See  he  limited  this  subordination  to  married  women, 
saying: 

As  a  minister  of  the  gospel,  I  deny  that  you  can 
find  anywhere  in  the  Bible,  woman's  subordination  till 
she  sent  the  curse  of  sin  upon  the  world,  and  that  relates 
only  to  married  women,  and  marriage  is  a  matter  of 
choice. 

The  spiritual  and  temporal  superiority  of  man  over 
woman  is  affirmed  by  clergymen  of  the  present  day  as 
strongly  as  by  those  of  the  dark  ages,  and  sermons  in 
opposition  to  her  equality  of  rights  are  as  frequently 
preached.  The  entrance  of  woman  into  renumerative 
industries  is  as  energetically  opposed  as  is  her  demand 
for  governmental  and  religious  freedom.  Rev.  Morgan 
Dix,  rector  of  Trinity  church,  New  York,  in  a  series  of 
"Lenten  Lectures"15  a  few  years  since,  made  woman 
the  subject  of  violent  attacks  as  an  inferior  and  subor- 

15.    Ably  reviewed  each  week  as  they  appeared,  by  Mrs.  Lillie  Devereux  Blake. 


THE    CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  483 

dinate  being,  now  attempting  to  pass  beyond  the 
bounds  set  by  God  for  her  restraint. 

There  is  a  more  emphatic,  a  more  hopeless  degra- 
dation for  her.  It  is  seen  when  she  seeks  to  reverse 
the  laws  of  her  nature  and  upset  the  economy  of  the 
universe,  pushing  her  way  out  of  her  own  sphere  in- 
to a  rivalry  with  men  in  their  sphere  and  in  their 
proper  pursuits.  On  that  must  follow  a  degradation, 
greatly  to  be  feared.  When  the  claim  for  rights  seems 
to  be  taking  the  form  of  a  competition  with  man,  on  a 
field  which  God  has  reserved  for  man  only,  in  a  work 
not  suited  to  the  woman,  and  in  professions  already 
overstocked  that  must  end,  not  in  enhancing  the 
merit  of  woman  in  his  eye  but  in  making  her  offensive 
and  detestable.  There  is  a  point  beyond  which  pa- 
tience will  not  hold  out;  and  of  this  let  the  woman  be 
sure:  that  if  she  go  too  far  the  end  will  arise;  and 
man  having  long  borne  her  manners  and  finding  that 
she  is  becoming  a  social  nuisance  and  a  general  tor- 
mentor, will  finally  lose  all  respect  for  her  and  thrust 
her  away  with  loathing  and  disgust  and  bid  her  be- 
have herself  and  go  back  to  her  old  inferiority. 

In  this  series  of  lectures,  Dr.  Dix  emphatically  de- 
clared man's  spiritual  supremacy  even  in  the  house- 
hold. 

The  father  is  by  Gods'  law,  priest  over  his  house- 
hold; to  him  should  they  look  as  a  witness  for  that 
God  who  gave  him  his  rank  and  title.16 

The  sects  agree  in  their  teachings  regarding  woman  ; 
Rev.  A.  Sherman,  at  one  time  president  of  Bacon 
College,  Kentucky,  declaring  that  woman  was  first  in 
transgression,  that  she  beguiled  man  and  was  there- 
fore put  in  bondage  under  his  authority,  said: 

The  wide  spreading  contempt  for  this  truth  exhibited 
by  the  political-religious  fashion  and  infidelity  of  the 
age,  is  one  of  the  most  alarming  symptoms  of  approach- 
ing anarchy  and  the   overthrow  of  our   liberties.     The 

16.    Lenten  Lectures,  p.  56-7-114. 


484  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

attempt  which  is  being  made  in  these  United  States 
to  elevate  the  wife  to  a  perfect  equality  with  the  hus- 
band, or  to  change  in  any  respect  the  relation  between 
them,  established  by  God  himself,  is  rank  infidelity, 
no  matter  what  specious  disguise  it  may  assume. 

In  a  sermon  of  his  Lenten  series,  entitled  "The 
Calling  of  a  Christian  Woman,  and  her  Training  to 
Fulfill  it,"  Dr.  Dix  said: 

We,  priests,  who  whatever  our  personal  short  com- 
ings, have  a  commission  from  above  and  a  message  to 
man  from  God,  and  are  the  mouth-piece  of  that  church 
to  which  his  hand-maidens  belong,  may  be  and  ought 
to  be  able  to  help  occasionally,  by  merely  stating 
what  the  Bible  and  the  church  declare  on  certain  great 
matters,  on  which  many  lower  ones  depend.  *  *  What 
did  Almighty  God,  the  Creator,  the  wise  Father  of 
all,  make  woman  for?  What  did  he  intend  her  to  do? 
What  did  he  not  mean  her  to  do  or  try  to  do? 

He  answered  these  questions  in  a  lecture  entitled, 
"A  Mission  for  Woman,"  of  the  same  series. 

Looking  for  a  mission,  for  a  work  to  do,  this  is  the 
attitude  of  many  women  to-day.  *  *  You  hear  of 
the  education  of  women,  of  co-education  of  the  sexes 
of  emancipation  of  woman  from  bonds — what  bonds  the 
Lord  only  knows!  Here  is  a  mission  worthy  of  your- 
selves, it  is  of  all  works  that  could  be  rendered  the 
fittest  for  a  church  woman,  because  she  was  at  the  be- 
ginning of  all  the  trouble  in  the  world.  *  *  We 
believe  the  old  story  of  the  Bible  re-affirmed  by  Christ 
and  his  apostles,  that  Adam  was  not  deceived  by  the 
devil,  but  that  the  woman  being  deceived,  was  in  the 
transgression.  Now  to  her  with  whom  the  wrong  be- 
gan, we  look  for  the  beginning  of  the  right.  Remem- 
ber that  in  the  woman  are  the  poles  of  the  good  and 
the  evil  in  human  nature. 

When  she  is  good  she  is  the  best  of  all  that  exists; 
when  bad,  the  worst. 

Another  sermon  of  this  Lenten  series,  expressed 
the  views  of  the  reverend  gentleman  upon    the  family 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  485 

relation,  bearing  of   children  and  divorce,  in  which  he 
expressed  his  hatred  of  modern   development   saying: 

I  feel  great  solicitude  about  the  subject  of  this  even- 
ing's lecture;  I  had  rather  not  touch  it  at  all.  You  may 
think  that  its  selection  is  an  instance  of  that  disrespect 
to  which  I  have  referred.  Not  so,  oh,  not  so.  I  hold 
the  old  ideas.  I  abhor  and  detest  the  modern  devel- 
opment; before  any  woman  who  fears  God,  does  her 
duty,  and  gives  us  in  her  life  and  acts  the  picture  of 
a  true  and  beautiful  womanliness,  I  rise  up  and  bless 
her  and  do  her  reverent  homage.  It  is  thus  in  no 
spirit  of  assumption  that  I  shall  say  what  I  have  to 
say  to-night.  It  is  rather  in  a  tone  of  remonstrance, 
of  wonder,  of  expostulation.  Why  do  women  err  as 
they  do?  Why  lower  themselves  to  men's  level? 
Why  should  the  queens  abdicate  their  thrones  and  go 
down  to  the  ring  and  act  unseemly  parts  and  lay  their 
honor  in  the  dust?  Let  us  think  this  evening  of  some 
things  done  by  women  which  one  would  have  said  that 
no  woman  with  a  woman's  heart  and  a  woman's  sense 
could,  after  due  reflection,  justify.  Sins  fall  naturally 
into  groups  or  classes,  and  if  I  speak  this  evening  of 
only  one  class  of  sins  it  is  because  the  time  does  not  per- 
mit us  to  take  a  larger  survey  of  the  field.  We  shall 
limit  ourselves,  then,  to  these  topics: 

The  lack  of  serious  views  of  life  and  the  habit  of 
turning  the  thoughts  exclusively  to  enjoyment.  The 
degradation  of  the  idea  of  matrimony,  as  shown  by  en- 
tering into  tliat  estate  for  low  and  unworthy  motives. 
The  deliberate  determination  of  some  married  women 
to  defeat  the  objects  for  which  marriage  was  insti- 
tuted ;  to  have  no  real  home ;  to  avoid  first  the  pains 
and  next  the  cares  and  duties  of  maternity.  The  habit, 
where  a  home  exists,  of  neglecting  it  by  spending  most 
of  the  time  away  from  it,  running  up  and  down  in 
pursuit  of  excitement  and  turning  their  children  over 
to  the  care  of  servants.  The  growing  indifference  to 
the  chief  of  all  social  abominations,  divorce,  and  the 
toleration  of  lax  notions  about  it. 

These  questions  of  most   vital  import   to  woman,  to 


486  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

her  material  condition,  intellectual  development  and 
place  in  the  church,  Rev.  Dr.  Dix  and  the  great  body 
of  the  church,  deem  themselves  supremely  competent 
to  adjust  without  woman's  voice  upon  them.  Wher- 
ever she  has  shown  her  views  upon  the  subject  of 
education,  industries,  the  family,  the  church,  to  be 
in  opposition  to  those  of  theologians,  she  has  at  once 
been  told  to  remain  in  her  old  position  of  "inferiority" 
looking  up  to  man  as  her  divinely  appointed  master 
and  spiritual  head;  Dr.  Dix,  in  his  lectures,  but  gave 
the  views  of  priests  of  all  denominations  at  the  pres- 
ent day.  Despite  the  advancing  civilization  of  the 
age,  and  the  fact  that  in  so  many  avocations  woman 
has  shown  her  capacity  for  taking  equal  part  with 
man,  we  find  theology  still  unprogressive;  a  portion 
of  the  press,  however,  severely  criticised  these  dis- 
courses.17    The    "Lenten      Pastoral"     1886,      of    Rev. 

17.  Women  and  their  Sphere! 

Rev.  Dr.  Dix,  some  weeks  since,  came  to  the  front  with  a  series  of  sermons  in 
which,  by  unsupported  assertion,  he  managed  to  demonstrate  that  women  in  the 
Tinted  States  are  no  longer  ornamental.    The  trouble  in  the  mind  of  the  reverend 

>.  seems  to  be  that  women,  having  grown  in  the  knowledge  of  the  truth  and  of 
that  liberty  wherewith  Christ  maketh  free,  have  concluded  that  their  sphere  is 
not  to  be  man's  slave — his  plaything,  a  human  gewgaw,  to  be  fondled,  caressed, 
or  kicked  as  the  masculine  mind  may  elect.  If  it  is  important  for  man  to  "know 
himself,"  brave  women  have  concluded  that  it  is  quite  as  essential  for  a  woman 
to  know  herself,  and  with  a  heroism  born  of  rights  conferred. by  God  Himself, 
women  have  in  these  latter  days  resolved  to  map  out  their  own  sphere  independ- 
ent of  man's  dictation.  They  have  made  commendable  headway.  They  have 
succeeded  in  shaking  down  a  number  of  antiquated  citadels  where  ignorance, 
superstition,  prejudice,  despotism  and  cruelty  found  refuge,  and,  as  they  tumbled, 
the  breath  of  popular  indignation  has  blown  the  fragments  away  like  chaff  in  the 
grasp  of  a  tornado.    These  brave  women,  finding  out  that— 

"Life  is  real,  life  is  earnest," 
set  themselves  about  solving  its  problems  for  themselves  and  for  their  sex.  Some  of 
them  asked  for  the  ballot.  Why?  Because  they  wanted  to  obliterate  from  the  statute 
books  such  laws  as  restricted  their  liberties  and  circumscribed  their  sphere.  As 
wives  they  wanted  to  be  the  equals  of  their  husbands  before  the  law.  Why  not? 
As  mothers  they  wanted  to  be  the  equal  of  their  sons  before  the  law.  Why  not? 
A  thousand  reasons  have  been  assigned  why  not,  but  they  do  not  answer  the  de- 
mand. What  is  wanted  as  prudent  guarantees  that  the  ballot  will  be  wisely 
wielded  by  those  upon  whom  the  great  right  has  been  conferred/  The  answer  it 


THE   CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  487 

A.  Cleveland  Coxe,  bishop  of  Western  New  York,  to 
the  laity  of  his  diocese,  contained  a  middle-age  re- 
minder to  women  of  the  impurity  of  motherhood,  in 
the  demand  made  for  church  cleansing  subsequent  to 
her  bringing  an  immortal  being  into  life: 

6.  Christian  women,  active  as  they  often  are,  above 
all  comparison  with  men,  are  yet  sometimes  negligent 
of  their  immediate  duties  as  wives  and  mothers  and 
fail  to  exert  that  healthful  influence  over  the  family, 
which  God  has  made  it  the  high  privilege  of  woman 
to  exercise  in  this  sphere  of  her  duty  and  her  glory. 
The  office  for  "the  Churching  of  Women'  testifies 
against  those  who  neglect  it,  as  forgetting  the  digni- 
ty of  motherhood  and  that  gratitude  to  God  which 
every  woman  owes  to  the  Christian  religion,  for  en- 
throning her  in  the  household,  and  making  the  exam- 
ready — intellect,  education,  a  fair  comprehension  of  the  obligations  of  citizenship, 
loyalty  to  the  Government,  to  republican  institutions  and  the  welfare  of  society. 
It  is  not  contended  that  women  do  not  possess  these  qualifications,  but  the  right 
is  withheld  from  them  nevertheless,  and  by  withholding  this  right  a  hundred 
others  are  included,  every  one  of  which  when  justice  bears  sway  will  be  granted. 
This  done  woman's  sphere  will  regulate  itself  as  does  man's  sphere.  "The  Boston 
Herald"  in  a  recent  issue  takes  Dr.  Dix  to  task  for  narrowness  of  vision  and 
weakness  of  grasp  in  discussing  "the  calling  of  a  Christian  woman,"  and  then 
proceeds  to  outline  its  own  views  on  the  "sphere  of  capable  women,"  in  which  it 
is  less  robust  than  the  reverend  D.  D.  To  intimate  that  the  Infinite  Disposer  of 
Events  favors  the  narrow,  vulgar  prejudices  of  Rev.  Dr.  Dix  and  his  organ,  the 
"Boston  Herald,"  is  to  dwarf  the  Almighty  to  human  proportions  and  bring  dis- 
credit upon  His  attributes  in  the  midst  of  which  justice  shines  with  resplendent 
glory,  but  the  demand  is  that  women  themselves  shall  determine  for  themselves 
the  boundaries  of  their  sphere.  It  is  not  a  question  of  mere  sentiment,  it  is  not 
a  matter  of  fancy  or  caprice.  It  is  a  rugged  question.  It  involves  food,  clothing, 
shelter.  It  means  self-reliance.  Women  are  not  appealing  to  mans  gallantry, 
nor  to  any  quality  of  less  importance  than  his  sense  of  justice  for  their  rights, 
Man  is  not  likely  to  regard  his  mother  with  less  affection  and  reverence  because 
she  is  his  father's  equal,  and  if  in  the  past,  when  women  were  more  degraded 
than  at  present,  the  best  men  have  found  in  women  inspiration  for  their  best 
work,  good  men  will  not  find  less  inspiration  for  good  work  when  women  are 
emancipated  from  the  thraldom  of  vicious  laws,  and  crowned  man's  equal  in  all 
matters  relating  to  "sphere,"  shall,  by  laws  relating  to  physical  and  mental  organ- 
ism, take  their  chances  in  the  world's  broad  field  of  battle,  demanding  and  re- 
ceiving for  work  done  in  any  of  the  departments  of  human  activities  men's  pay 
when  they  perform  men's  work. — Indianapolis  Sentinel,  May  13,  1883. 


488  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

pie  of  the  "Blessed  among  Women"  her  peculiar  lesson 
and  incentive  to  piety. 

Many  portions  of  this  advice  is  an  open  insult  to 
woman,  and  could  the  divine  but  see  it,  is  even  from 
the  Christian  standard  an  imputation  upon  that  being 
he  professes  to  revere  as  the   Creator  of    the  universe. 

A  work  was  recently  written  by  an  English  bishop, 
bearing  upon  the  governmental  effort  for  repeal  of  the 
law  forbidding  marriage  with  a  deceased  wife's  sister 
or  brother.  This  work  was  written  for  the  express 
purpose  of  proving  that,  while  it  is  eminently  im- 
proper and  sinful  for  a  woman  to  marry  her  deceased 
husband's  brother,  it  is  eminently  proper  and  right  for  a 
man  to  marry  his  deceased  wife's  sister,  and  this  upon 
the  same  principle  that  governed  the  disinheritance 
of  woman  under  the  Salic  law;  i.  e.,  because  by  mar- 
riage a  woman  becomes  merged  into  her  husband's 
family.  He  specifically  declares  that  the  sister  of  the 
wife  is  in  no  sense  the  sister  of  the  husband,  therefore 
it  is  permissible  for  a  man  to  marry  his  wife's  sisters 
successively.  But  he  affirms  that  to  the  contrary,  the 
widow  cannot  marry  her  deceased  husband's  brother, 
as  by  the  act  of  her  marriage  she  became  a  part  of  her 
husband's  family;  a  second  marriage  to  such  husband's 
brother  thereby  becoming  incestuous.  This  is  the  law 
of  England,  both  religious  and  civil.  A  striking  ev- 
idence of  the  incongruity  of  this  law  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  the  illegitimacy  of  such  brother  is  held  to 
destroy  the  relationship,  as  by  law  of  both  church 
and  state  an  illegitimate  child  is  not  held  as  related 
to  its  father;  he  is  the  son  of  nobody.  A  woman  can 
marry  two  brothers  in  succession,  one  the  child  of 
marriage,  the  other  a  child  of  the  same  father  born 
outside  of  the  marriage  relation.     The  son  of  nobody, 


THE  CHURCH   OF  TO-DAY  489 

a  being  unfathered  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  is  the  brother 
of  nobody.  A  striking  instance  of  the  effect  of  this 
law  occurred  in  England  within  the  past  few  years, 
when  a  lady  successively  married  two  brothers,  the 
first  a  natural  son  of  the  Earl  of  Waldegrave,  the 
second  his  legitimate  son.  The  father,  although  not 
recognized  as  such  in  law,  left  the  bulk  of  his  prop- 
erty to  his  natural  son;  the  title,  over  which  he  had 
no  power  of  alienation,  descending  to  the  son  born  un- 
der authority  of  the  church.  The  first  husband,  dy- 
ing, the  lady  afterward  married  the  legitimate  son, 
thus  becoming  first,  "Mrs."  Waldegrave,  and  after 
wards,  "Lady"  Waldegrave,  securing  both  fortune  and 
title  by  her  marriage  with  the  non-recognized  and  law- 
recognized  sons  of  the  same  father,  and  breaking 
neither  the  law  of  state  or  church  in  so  doing.  Amer- 
ican clergymen  of  the  Episcopal  church  have  ex- 
pressed views  in  accordance  with  those  of  the  English 
bishop.  Rev.  George  Zabriskie  Gray,  D.  D.,  dean 
of  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  of  Cambridge, 
Mass.,  published  a  work  in  1885  entitled  "Husband 
and  Wife,"  also  suggested  by  the  constantly  debated 
English  question  of  State,  concerning  the  lawfulness 
of  marriage  with  a  deceased  wife's  sister.  Dr.  Gray 
coincides  with  many  of  his  reverend  brethren  in  the 
declaration  that  with  the  wife  no  liberty  of  divorce  is 
allowable,  but  his  reasons  present  somewhat  the  fresh- 
ness of  novelty*  As  previously  stated,  the  non-rela- 
tionship of  husband  and  wife  was  at  one  time  the  gen- 
eral Christian  belief.  While  like  the  English  bishop, 
Rev.  Mr.  Gray  admits  the  relationship  of  the  wife  to 
the  husband  to  such  extent  that  becoming  fully  ab- 
sorbed by  him  his  relatives  become  hers;  like  the 
English  bishop  he  farther  declares  that  in  consequence 


490  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  this  absorption,  the  wife  loses  her  former  family 
relationship,  her  mother  and  father,  her  sister  or 
brother  no  longer  bearing  relationship  to  her,  but  have 
become  to  her  as  strangers.      He  said: 

The  wife  becomes  a  member  of  his  family,  while  he 
does  not  become  one  of  her  own.  The  equilateral  idea 
is  a  physiological18  and  psychological  impossibility. 
The  unity  is  in  the  man.  The  woman  by  marriage 
becomes  a  member  of  the  man,  therefore  she  cannot 
put  him  away;  for  a  member  cannot  put  away  the 
head;  the  impurity  of  the  wife  imperils  the  family, 
renders  pedigree  and  all  concerned  therein  uncertain, 
and  so  she  may  be  put  away.  But  the  husband's  un- 
chastity,  while  it  may  be  as  sinful,  yet  has  no  such 
effect.  It  does  not  render  it  doubtful  who  are  right- 
ful children  of  his  stock,  who  are  entitled  to  the 
name  that  he  and  his  wife  both  bear,  and  therefore 
does  not  call  for  the  severance  of  the  marriage  tie, 
that  is,  the  dissolution  of  the  family.  That  is,  di- 
vorce so  far  as  Scripture  goes  seems  to  be  a  measure 
for  the  protection  of  the  family  and  of  the  rightful 
inheritance  of  whatever  is  to  be  transmitted  to  the 
children,  and  so  a  remedy  open  only  to  man.  There 
seems  to  be  no  way  of  preventing  the  abuse  of  divorce, 
if  any  principle  is  admitted  that  will  extend  it  to 
woman. 

Under  this  form  of  reasoning,  both  Dr.  Gray  and 
the  English  bishop  dispose  with  ease  of  the  state 
obstacle  to  marriage  with  a  deceased  wife's  sister.  In- 
asmuch as  by  marriage  the  husband  forms  no  ties  of 
consanguinity  with  the  wife's  family,  she  having  be- 
come a  member  of  his  family  without  his  having  be- 
come a  member  of  hers,  marriage  with  his  deceased 
wife's  sister  would  be  the  same  as  marriage  with  an 
entire  stranger,  saying: 

As  the  husband  enters  into  no  connection    with  the 

18.    It  is  not  a  physiological  cause  which  produced  our  present  family  with  the 
father  as  ruler  and  owner  of  all  property.— Kemptsky. 


THE   CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  491 

wife's  family,  her  sisters  are  no  more  his  sisters  than 
they  had  been  before.  Therefore  he  may  marry  one 
of  them  as  freely  as  any  one  else,  as  far  as  any  real 
principle  involved  in  matrimony  is  concerned. 

The  "Christian  Register,"  of  Boston,  commenting 
upon  Dr.  Gray's  work,  although  itself  a  recognized 
organ  of  the  Unitarian  church,  yet  in  a  spirit  more  in 
accord  with  modern  thought,  carefully  corrected  the  size 
of  type  in  the  word  "wife"  upon  the  title-page  and 
outside  of  the  book,  thus:  HUSBAND  AND  wife:19 
also  facetiously  referring  to  the  late  Artemus  Ward, 
who  at  time  of  the  late  civil  war  was  ready  to  sacri- 
fice all    his    wife's   relations.20     These    two    works    of 

19.  By  a  singular  lack  of  oversight  in  making  up  the  title-page  and  lettering 
the  cover,  the  words  "Husband  and  Wife"  have  been  printed  as  though  they  re- 
ferred to  objects  of  equal  importance.  Even  the  carefully  trained  eye  of  a 
former  editor  of  the  "Christian  Register,"  the  Rt.  Rev.  F.  D.  Huntington,  D.  D. 
Bishop  of  Central  New  York,  who  furnishes  a  brief  and  cautious  introduc- 
tion to  the  volume,  did  not  detect  this  error.  It  has  been  left  to  us  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  incongruity  of  the  title-page,  and  to  give  the  sentiment  of  the  book 
proper  typographical  expression.  The  conventional  sobriety  and  ecclesiasticism 
of  the  title-page  do  not  prepare  one  for  the  novelty  of  the  contents.  It  is  only 
by  reading  the  book  that  we  become  aware  of  them.  The  sensation  of  the  reader 
is  somewhat  the  same  as  one  would  have  on  going  into  a  building  which  from  the 
facade  appeared  to  be  a  plain,  dignified  Episcopal  church,  but  which  on  entering 
he  found  to  be  a  mediaeval  circus.  Not  that  there  is  anything  intentionally  hilar- 
ious in  the  arena  of  this  book  or  that  it  displays  any  athletic  vigor  of  thought, 
but  that  it  is  essentially  novel  and  revolutionary.  Dr.  Gray  is  not  unconscious 
of  the  novelty  of  his  doctrine.  "It  is  believed,"  he  says,  "that  the  position  of 
this  essay  is  new  to  the  discussion.  It  has  not  been  urged  or  stated  ir.  print  in 
England  or  America;"  and,  later  on,  he  expresses  a  well-grounded  belief  that 
"some  will  smile"  at  his  views  as  "antiquated  and  fanciful."  All  of  these  claims 
may  be  readily  granted.  First,  the  doctrine  is  new.  It  is  new  at  least  in  its  pres- 
ent dress— as  new  as  Adam  would  seem  to  be,  if  he  put  on  a  modern  costume, 
dyed  his  gray  hairs,  and  appeared  in  Boston  as  a  social  lecturer. —  The  Christian 
Register,  Boston. 

20.  Who  has  forgotten  the  sublime  magnanimity  of  Artemus  Ward,  when  he 
proposed  on  a  certain  occasion  to  sacrifice  all  his  wife's  relatives?  This  is  exact 
ly  what  Dean  Gray  theoretically  achieves.  He  not  only  abolishes  his  own  wife's 
relatives,  but  those  of  other  men  who  have  entered  into  the  marriage  relation- 
ship. He  makes  thorough  work  of  it.  Not  only  does  he  extinguish  the  wife's 
sister  as  a  relative,  but  also  her  cousins  and  her  aunts.  In  fact,  he  even  abolishes 
the  mother-in-law.  The  luxury  of  a  mother-in-law  is  granted  to  the  wife,  who  by 
virtue  of  marriage  becomes  related  to  her  husband's  mother,  but  is  not  granted 
to  the  husband,  who  has  no  relation  whatever  to  the  mother  of  his  wife.    As  to 


492  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  English  bishop  and  the  American  dean  are  con- 
sistent with  the  teaching  of  the  Christian  ages  in 
reference  to  woman.  Not  held  as  belonging  primarily 
to  herself,  but  ever  to  some  man,  her  very  relation- 
ship to  the  mother  who  brought  her  into  life  destroyed 
by  law,  she  once  again  through  the  church  is  pre- 
sented to  the  world  as  a  being  without  a  birthright, 
not  even  receiving  for  it  Esau's  mess  of  pottage,  or 
a  father's  shorn  blessing,  after  its  loss.  She  is  held 
up  to  view  as  without  father,  mother,  or  individual 
existence.  Rev.  Knox-Little,  a  high  church  clergy- 
man of  England,  traveled  in  the  United  States  in  the 
fall  of  1880.  During  his  stay  in  Philadelphia,  he 
preached  a  "Sermon  to  Women,"  in  the  large  church 
of  St.  Clements.  As  reported  in  the  "Times"  of  that 
city,  its  chief  features  were  a  representation  of  wo- 
man's inferior  intellect,  her  duty  of  unqualified  obe- 
dience to  her  husband,  however  evil  his  life,  the  sin- 
fulness of  divorce  and  the  blessedness  of  a  large  fam- 
ily of  children.      He  said: 

God  made  himself  to  be  born  of  a  woman  to  sanc- 
tify the  virtue  of  endurance;  loving  submission  is  an 
attribute  of  woman;  men  are  logical,  but  women  lack- 
ing this  quality,  have  an  intricacy  ot  thought.  There 
are  those  who  think  woman  can  be  taught  logic;  this 
is  a  mistake,  they  can  never  by  any  power  of  educa- 
tion arrive  at  the  same  mental  status  as  that  enjoyed  by 
man,  but  they  have  a  quickness  of  apprehension,  which 
is  usually  called  leaping  at  conclusions,  that  is  aston- 
ishing. There,  then,  we  have  distinctive  traits  of  a 
woman,  namely:  endurance,  loving  submission  and 
quickness  of    apprehension.      Wifehood    is   the  crown- 

the  sisters,  the  cousins  and  the  aunts,  there  may  be  a  reason  why  Sir  Joseph  Por- 
ter, K.  C  B.,  would  view  with  dismay  an  equal  addition  to  their  numoer  through 
the  offices  of  matrimony;  but  the  majority  of  men  not  blessed  with  a  similar 
superfluity  would  hardly  wish  to  forego  this  delightful  form  of  conjugal  perquis- 
ite.— Ibid. 


THE  CHURCH   OF  TO-DAY  493 

ing  glory  of  a  woman.  In  it  she  is  bound  for  all  time. 
To  her  husband  she  owes  the  duty  of  unqualified  obe- 
dience. There  is  no  crime  which  a  man  can  commit 
which  justifies  his  wife  in  leaving  him  or  applying  for 
that  monstrous  thing,  divorce.  It  is  her  duty  to  sub- 
ject herself  to  him  always,  and  no  crime  that  he  can 
commit  can  justify  her  lack  of  obedience.  If  he  be 
a  bad  or  wicked  man,  she  may  gently  remonstrate 
with  him,  but  refuse  him,  never.  Let  divorce  be  an- 
athema;  curse  it;  curse  this  accursed  thing,  divorce; 
curse  it,  curse  it!  Think  of  the  blessedness  of  having 
children.  I  am  the  father  of  many  and  there  have 
been  those  who  have  ventured  to  pity  me;  'keep  your 
pity  for  yourself/  I  have  replied.  'They  never  cost  me 
a  single  pang.'  In  this  matter  let  women  exercise  that 
endurance  and  loving  submission,  which  with  intricacy 
of  thought  are  their  only  characteristics." 

Such  a  sermon  as  the  above  preached  to  women  un- 
der the  full  blaze  of  nineteenth  century  civilization, 
needs  few  comments.  In  it  woman's  inferiority  and 
subordination  are  as  openly  asserted  as  at  any  time  dur- 
ing the  dark  ages.  According  to  Rev.  Knox-Little, 
woman  possesses  no  responsibility;  she  is  deprived 
of  conscience,  intelligent  thought,  self-respect,  and  is 
simply  an  appendage  to  man,  a  thing.  As  the  clergy 
in  the  Middle  Ages  divided  rights  into  those  of  persons 
and  things,  themselves  being  the  persons,  the  laity 
things,  so  the  Rev.  Knox-Little  and  his  ilk  of  to- 
day, divide  the  world  into  persons  and  things,  men 
being  the  persons,  and  women  the  things.  Rev.  Dr. 
T.  De  Witt  Talmage,  of  Brooklyn,  New  York,  joins 
his  brethren  in  preaching  of  "the  first,  fair,  frail  wo- 
man; her  creation,  her  fall  and  her  sorrow."  Speak- 
ing of  the  trials  of  housekeepers,  he  said: 

Again,  there  is  the  trial  of  severe  economy.  Nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  households  out  of  the  thou- 
sand are  subject  to  it,  some  under  more,  and  some  under 


494  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

less  stress  of  circumstances.  Especially  if  a  man  smokes 
very  expensive  cigars  and  takes  very  costly  dinners  at 
the  restaurants,  he  will  be  severe  in  demanding  do- 
mestic economies.  This  is  what  kills  thousands  of 
women ;  attempting  to  make  five  dollars  do  the  work 
of  seven.  How  the  bills  come  in.  The  woman  is  the 
banker  of  the  household;  she  is  the  president,  and 
cashier,  and  teller,  discount  clerk,  and  there  is  a  panic 
every  four  weeks.  This  thirty  years  war  against  high 
prices;  this  perpetual  study  of  economics,  this  life- 
long attempt  to  keep  the  outgoes  less  than  the  income 
exhausts  millions  of  housekeepers.  O,  my  sister,  this 
is  part  of  divine  discipline." 

It  should  require  but  little  thought  upon  woman's 
part  to  see  how  closely  her  disabilities  are  interwoven 
with  present  religious  belief  and  teaching  as  to  her 
inferiority  and  pre-ordained  subordination.  If  she  needs 
aid  to  thought,  the  Cravens,  the  Knox-Littles,  the 
Talmages,  will  help  her.  The  spirit  of  the  priesthood, 
Protestant  equally  with  Catholic,  is  that  of  the  early 
and  middle  ages.  The  foundation  being  the  same,  the 
teaching  is  of  similar  character.  From  the  sermons 
referred  to,  we  can  justly  declare  they  express  the 
opinions  of  the  priesthood  as  a  body ;  we  meet  no  pro- 
test against  them.  Not  a  single  church  has  denied 
these  degrading  theories ;  no  clergyman  has  preached 
against  the  doctrines  mentioned,  blasphemous  as  they 
are  against  the  primal  rights  of  the  soul.  These  ser- 
mons stand  as  representatives,  not  only  of  high  church 
theology  in  regard  to  woman,  but  as  expressing  the 
belief  of  all  churches  in  her  creation  and  existence  as 
an  inferior  and  appendage  to  man.  All  her  suffering, 
material  or  spiritual,  her  restrictions,  her  sorrows, 
her  deprivation  of  the  right  of  unrestricted  conscience 
are  depicted  as  parts  of  her  divine  discipline,  which 
she  must  accept   with  endurance  and    loving    submis- 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  495 

sion.  Even  from  the  criminal,  she  is  not  to  free  her- 
self, or  refuse  him  obedience.  Scarcely  a  Protestant 
sect  that  has  not  within  a  few  years,  in  some  way, 
placed  itself  upon  record  as  sustaining  the  doctrine  of 
woman's  subordination.  The  Pan-Presbyterian  Council 
that  assembled  in  Edinburg  a  few  years  since  refused 
to  admit  a  woman  even  as  a  listener  to  its  proceed- 
ings, although  women  constitute  at  least  two-thirds  of 
the  memberhip  of  that  church.  A  solitary  woman  who 
persisted  in  remaining  to  listen  to  the  discussions  of 
this  body  was  removed  by  force;  "six  stalwart  Pres- 
byterians" lending  their  ungentle  aid  to  her  ejection. 
The  same  Pan-Presbyterian  body  in  session  in  Phila- 
delphia, the  summer  of  1880,  laughed  to  scorn  the 
suggestion  of  a  liberal  member  that  the  status  of  wo 
man  in  that  church  should  receive  some  consideration  ; 
referring  to  the  work  of  the  Sisters  of  Charity,  in  the 
Catholic  church,  and  that  of  women  among  the  Qua- 
kers. Although  this  question  was  twice  introduced 
it  was  as  often  "met  with  derisive  laughter,"  and  no 
action  was  taken  upon  it.  But  had  this  liberal  mem- 
ber been  wise  enough  to  have  brought  before  this  body 
the  fact  that  the  Presbyterian  church  is  losing  its 
political  influence  because  of  the  great  preponderance 
of  its  women  members  without  the  ballot,  he  would 
have  received  more  consideration.  As  all  churches 
seek  influence  in  politics,  we  may  rest  assured  that 
when  the  church  as  a  whole,  or  any  sect  thereof,  shall 
be  found  sustaining  the  political  rights  of  woman  or 
her  religious  equality  in  the  church,  it  will  be  from 
the  worldly  wisdom  of  a  desire  to  retain  fleeting  polit- 
ical power.  The  life  or  the  death  of  the  church  large- 
ly depends  upon  its  political  forethought. 

Differing  political  rights  have  ever  been  productive 


496  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  diverse  moral  codes.  What  was  considered  right 
for  the  king  and  the  nobility  has  ever  been  wrong  for 
the  peasant.  The  moral  rights  of  the  master  and  the 
slave  were  ever  dissimilar,  while  under  Christianity 
two  codes  of  morals  have  ever  been  extant,  the  lax 
code  for  man,  the  strict  for  woman.  This  diveisity  is 
shown  by  the  different  position  that  society  accords 
to  an  immoral  man  and  an  immoral  woman,  but  no- 
where is  the  recognition  of  differing  codes  of  morals 
for  man  and  woman  as  clearly  shown  as  in  the  church, 
as  presented  in  discourses  of  clergymen.  To  them 
adultery  in  the  husband  is  merely  a  pastime  in  which 
he  can  indulge  without  injury  to  his  wife,  who  is  pow- 
erless to  put  him  away,  nor  has  she  been  wronged. 
But  to  the  contrary,  under  the  same  teaching,  should 
the  wife  prove  thus  unfaithful  she  should  immediately 
be  cast  out.  Colored  pastors  unite  with  their  white 
brethren  in  denying  woman's  moral,  spiritual  or 
personal  equality  with  man.  Rev.  Alexander  Crum- 
mel,81  a  colored  clergyman  of  Washington,  rector 
of  St.  Lukes  (Episcopal)  church,  in  1881,  preached  a 
sermon  upon  the  biblical  position  of  woman,  which 
was  published  in  tract  form  for  circulation.  He  referred 
to  her  as  having  been  created  inferior  to  man,  with 
no  right,  natural  or  acquired,  by  creation  or  revela- 
tion, to  govern  herself  or  hold  opinions  of  her  own. 
This  sermon — "Marriage  and  Divorce"— laid  down  the 
following  principles: 

Marriage  is  a  divine  institution.   It  came  from  God. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  the  creation  of    legislative  action. 

ax.  "One  of  the  most  learned  colored  men  in  the  country  is  Alexander  Crum- 
mell,  Rector  of  St.  Luke's  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  Washington,  D.  C. 
When  he  desired  to  study  for  holy  orders  he  applied  at  Kenyon  College,  Gambin  . 
O.,  but  was  refused  admission.  He  made  applications  elsewhere,  which  were 
equally  unsuccessful.  He  finally  went  to  Oxford,  England,  and  there  took  a  fall 
course.  He  is  an  eloquent  preacher,  and  his  congregation  embraces  a  large 
number  of  prominent  colored  citizens." 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  497 

It  is  not  merely  a  civil  contract.  It  is  not  the  inven- 
tion of  man.  The  estate  of  matrimony  is  a  sacred 
one;  originated  by  the  will  of  God,  and  governed  by 
his  law.  Marriage  is  indissoluble.  Adultery  on  part 
of  the  wife  is  ground  for  divorce.  Thus  far  we  have 
considered  the  case  with  reference  to  the  unfaithfulness 
of  the  wife,  and  have  shown  that  when  a  woman  vio- 
lates the  covenant  of  marriage  by  adultery,  her  hus- 
band has  the  right  to  divorce  her.  But  now  the  ques- 
tion comes,  "Is  not  this  a  reciprocal  right?"  When 
husbands  are  unfaithful,  have  not  wives  the  right  to  the 
divorce  them?  My  reply  is  that  no  warrant  for  such 
divorce  can  be  found  in  the  Bible.  Under  both  cov- 
enants, the  right  of  divorce  is  given  exclusively  to 
husband.  The  right  in  all  cases  is  guaranteed  to  the 
man  only.  And  so  far  forth  we  have  the  word  of  God 
for  its  specific  reservation  to  husbands.  In  no  case  is 
it  even  hinted  that  a  woman  has  the  right  of  divorce, 
if  even  her  husband  be  guilty  of  unfaithfulness.  There 
is  a  broad,  general  obligation  laid  upon  woman  in  the 
marriage  relation.  The  sum  of  the  matter  respecting 
the  woman  seems  to  be  this;  the  woman  is  bound  by 
the  ties  of  wedlock  during  the  whole  period  of  her  hus- 
band's life;  and  even  under  distressful  circumstances 
has  no  right  to  break  them;    i.  e.,  by  divorce. 

The  additional  reasons  presented  by  Rev.  Mr.  Crum- 
mel  against  woman's  right  of  divorce,  even  for  the  in- 
fidelity of  the  husband,  are  "The  hidden  mystery  of 
generation,  the  wondrous  secret  of  propagated  life 
committed  to  the  trust  of  woman."  In  thus  referring 
to  those  laws  of  nature  whose  conditions  are  not  yet 
fully  understood,  Rev.  Mr.  Crummel  presented  the 
strongest  reasons  why  the  mother  and  not  the  father 
should  be  regarded  as  the  true  head  of  the  family. 
This  "hidden  mystery  of  generation,  this  won- 
drous secret  of  propagated  life,  committed  to  the 
trust  of  woman,"  most  forcibly  demonstrates  that  she 
should  be  the  one  in    whose  power    is  placed    the  op- 


498  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

portunity  for  escape  from  an  adulterous  husband,  thus 
enabling  her  to  keep  her  body  a  holy  temple  for  its 
divine-human  uses,  over  which  as  priestess  she  alone 
should  possess  control.  The  assertion  of  Rev.  Alex- 
ander Crummel,  that  an  adulterous  husband  cannot 
do  the  same  wrong  to  the  wife  that  the  wife  does  to 
the  husband  under  similar  circumstances,  is  absolutely 
false.  By  reason  of  certain  "physiological  mysteries," 
to  which  he  refers,  but  of  which  he  also  shows  abso- 
lute ignorance,  the  wrong  done  woman  by  reason  of 
her  potential  motherhood  is  infinitely  greater  to  her 
than  similar  infidelity  upon  her  part  can  possibly  be 
to  the  husband.  And  not  to  her  alone  but  to  the  chil- 
dren whom  she  may  bring  to  life.  His  attempted 
justification  of  the  husband's  adultery  upon  the  plea 
that  "when  a  man  begets  bastard  children,  he  does  so 
beyond  the  boundary  of  the  home,"  and  so  cannot 
"foist  spurious  children  upon  the  household  and  kin- 
dred— that  the  family  is  kept  together,"  are  most 
sophistical  and  fallacious  methods  of  reasoning,  entirely 
inimical  to  truth  and  purity.  Of  an  absolutely  selfish 
and  libidinous  character,  they  have  been  used  by  prof- 
ligates in  the  church  and  in  the  state  as  pleas  for  a 
license  that  has  no  regard  to  the  rights  of  woman,  or 
the  duties  of  fatherhood,  and  are  not  only  essentially 
immoral  in  themselves,  but  are  equally  destructive  of 
personal  and  social  purity. 

The  individual  and  not  the  family  is  the  social  unit; 
the  rights  of  individuals  are  foremost.  Immorality 
of  man  everywhere  presents  a  more  serious  and  de- 
structive aspe  t  than  that  of  woman.  Aside  from  the 
unmarried  mother  whom  society  does  not  recognize  as 
longer  a  part  of  it,  is  the  irreparable  wrong  done  to 
those  innocent  human    beings  whom  Rev.    Mr.  Crum 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  499 

mel  designates  as  "spurious  children;"  whom  the 
Catholics  call  "sacrilegious"  when  the  father  is  shown 
to  be  a  priest,  and  upon  whom  society  at  large  terms 
"illegitimate."  Closely  connected  with  injury  to  the 
innocent  child  itself,  thrust  into  being  without  pro- 
vision for  its  future  needs,  is  the  detriment  to  society 
which  thus  finds  itself  compelled  to  assume  the  duties 
belonging  to  the  bastard's  father.  Such  children,  for 
whom  neither  home  nor  fatherly  care  awaits,  are  al- 
lowed by  him  to  grow  up  neglected  street  waifs,  un- 
educated, untrained,  uncared  for,  filling  alms-houses, 
reformatories,  and  prisons  of  the  land,  perhaps  to  die 
upon  the  gallows.  The  responsibility  of  such  fathers 
is  not  a  subject  of  church  teaching;  it  is  simply  passed 
carelessly  by,  regardless  of  the  unspeakable  wrongs 
connected  with  it.  If,  as  the  Rev.  Mr.  Turnstall  as- 
serts, the  Bible  is  not  for  woman,  if  his  position  is 
true,  or  if  that  of  the  Jews  who  claim  that  the  Ten 
Commandments  were  given  to  man  alone,  is  true,  it 
is  to  man  alone  that  adultery  is  forbidden.  Luther 
asserted  that  the  Ten  Commandments  applied  to  neither 
Gentiles  nor  Christians,  but  only  to  the  Jews.  It  was 
to  man  alone  that  Christ  spoke  against  adultery,  say- 
ing: "Whosoever  looketh  upon  a  woman  to  lust  after 
her  hath  already  committed  adultery  with  her,  in  his 
heart.1'  To  man,  Christ  also  said:  "Owing  to  the 
hardness  of  their  hearts,  Moses  permitted  a  man  to 
put  away  his  wife,  but  it  was  not  so  from  the  begin- 
ning." Man,  and  not  woman,  is  commanded  to  leave 
father  and  mother;  man  is  to  cleave  unto  his  wife, 
not  woman  unto  her  husband.  It  was  the  men  of  Cor- 
inth whom  Paul  addressed  concerning  lewdness,  "Such 
fornication  was  never  known  among  the  heathen  as  that 
a  man  should  take  his  father's  wife."81 
to.    I-  Corinthians,  V:  i. 


500  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  connected  with 
church  teaching,  is  the  lightness  with  which  such  pos- 
itive declarations  of  Christ  as  to  the  relations  of  hus- 
band and  wife  are  cast  aside,  or  his  teaching  entirely 
reversed,  in  order  that  man  may  receive  license  for  an 
immorality  forbidden  to  woman. 

It  must  be  noted  that  the  chief  reason  given  by  the 
church  for  assuming  woman's  greater  guilt  in  commit- 
ting adultery  is  not  based  upon  the  greater  immorality 
of  the  act,  per  sef  but  the  injury  to  property  rights, 
succession,  etc.  It  must  also  be  noted  that  the  great 
objection  of  the  church  to  divorce  on  part  of  woman 
lies  in  the  fact  that  the  wife  thus  escapes  from  a  con- 
dition of  bondage  to  one  of  comparative  freedom.  In 
securing  a  divorce  she  repudiates  the  husband's  "head- 
ship," she  thus  subverts  his  authority;  by  this  act  she 
places  herself  upon  an  equality  of  moral  and  property 
rights  with  man,  and  the  church  not  admitting  such 
equality  between  man  and  woman,  is  hostile  to  divorce 
upon  her  part.  Every  new  security  gained  by  woman 
for  the  protection  of  her  civil  rights  in  or  out  of  the 
family,  is  a  direct  blow  at  the  church  theory  of  her 
inferiority  and  subordination.  Her  full  freedom  is  to 
be  looked  for  through  her  increased  legal  and  political 
rights  and  not  through  the  church. 

During  the  same  year  of  the  remarkable  sermon  by 
Rev.  Alexander  Crummel,  1881,  Rev.  S.  W.  Dilke 
read  a  paper  before  the  Social  Science  Association  at 
Saratoga,  entitled  "Lax  Divorce  Legislation."  He 
showed  the  same  disregard  for  the  rights  of  the  indi- 
vidual, when  the  individual  was  a  wife,  as  his  brother 
clergymen,  saying :  "Our  lax  divorce  system  treats 
the  wrongs  of  the  wife  chiefly  as  those  of  a  mere  in- 
dividual."    He  was    assiduous    in  his    regard  for    the 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  561 

protection  of  the  womanly  nature,  recognizing  sex, 
"her  sex"  as  "a  profound  fact  in  nature,"  but  why  the 
sex  of  woman  should  be  a  more  "profound  fact"  than 
the  sex  of  man,  he  did  not  show.  That  woman  now 
claims  a  recognition  of  her  individuality  as  a  being 
possessed  of  personal  rights,  is  the  basis  of  present  at- 
tack upon  divorce  by  the  church;  nor  is  the  state  more 
ready  to  admit  her  individual  representation  and  per- 
sonal rights  of  self-government.  In  March,  1887,  Rev. 
E.  B.  Hurlbert  preached  a  sermon  in  the  First  Baptist 
church  of  San  Francisco  on  "The  Relation  of  Husband 
and  Wife, "afterward  published,  in  which  he  said: 

"The  principal  objection  to  the  Episcopal  marriage 
service  raised  by  the  self-willed  woman  of  the  period  is 
that  it  requires  her  to  obey  her  husband.  But  this 
objection  is  leveled  equally  against  the  requirement 
of  the  word  of  God,  and,  furthermore,  the  additional 
promise  to  honor  and  love  him  can  only  be  kept  in 
the  spirit  of  obedience.  This  obligation  is  founded 
upon  the  fact  that  he  is  her  husband,  and  if  she  can- 
not reverence  him  for  what  he  is  in  himself,  still  she 
must  reverence  him  for  the  position  which  he  holds. 
And,  again,  she  must  render  this  submissive  reverence 
to  her  husband's  headship  as  unto  the  Lord,  as  is  fit 
in  the  Lord.'  She  reverences  him  not  simply  as  a 
man,  but  as  her  own  husband,  behind  whom  stands 
the  Lord  himself.  It  is  the  Lord  who  has  made  him 
husband,  and  the  honor  with  which  she  regards  him, 
though  himself  personally  not  deserving  it,  is  in  real- 
ity an  honoring  of  the  Lord.  Many  a  Christian  wo- 
man, actuated  by  this  motive,  has  been  most  tenderly 
submissive,  dutiful  and  patient,  as  towards  the  most 
unreasonable  and  despotic  of  husbands — inspired  by 
the  remembrance  that  it  was  a  service  rendered  unto 
Christ.  Let  the  wife,  then,  reverence  her  husband 
for  what  he  is  in  himself,  for  his  loving  and  noble 
qualities;  but  if  these  qualities  do  not  belong  to  him, 
then  let  her  reverence  him  for   the  sake  of  his  office — 


502  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

simply  because  he  is  her  husband— and  in  either  event 
let  her  reverence  him,  because  in  doing  so  she  is  hon- 
oring the  Lord  and  Savior." 

It  is  but  a  short  time  since  the  pastor  of  the  Swe- 
denborgian  church,  Washington,  D.  C,  as  reported  by 
one  of  his  flock,  expressed  to  that  body  his  opinion 
that  the  chuch  had  better  remain  unrepresented  rather 
than  have  women  represent  it,  and  this,  although 
nine-tenths  of  his  congregation  are  women.  It  is,  how- 
ever, pleasing  to  state  that  the  committee  for  that  pur- 
pose elected  an  equal  number  of  women  with  men; 
the  efforts  of  the  pastor  against  woman,  securing  but 
seven  votes.  The  Unitarian  and  Universalist  churches 
which  ordain  women  to  preach  and  administer  the  or- 
dinances, still  make  these  women  pastors  feel  that  the 
innovation  is  not  a  universally  acceptable  one.  In  a 
lengthy  pastoral  letter  issued  by  the  Episcopal  con- 
vention held  in  Chicago  a  few  years  since,  it  was  as- 
serted that  the  claim  of  the  wife  to  an  equal  right  with 
her  husband  to  the  control  of  her  person,  her  property 
and  her  earnings  was  "disparaging  the  Christian  law 
of  the  household."  The  Methodist  church  still  refuses 
to  place  woman  upon  an  equality  with  man,  either  in 
the  ministry  or  in  lay  representation,  a  few  years  since 
taking  from  them  their  previous  license  to  preach, 
and  this  despite  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Van  Cott,  a  woman 
evangelist,  did  such  severe  work  during  a  period  of 
fourteen  years,  as  to  seriously  injure  her  health,  and 
so  successful  were  her  ministrations  that  she  brought 
more  converts  to  the  church  than  a  dozen  of  its  most 
influential  bishops  during  the  same  time.  To  such 
bitter  lengths  has  opposition  to  woman's  ordination 
been  carried  in  that  church  that  Rev.  Mr.  Buckley, 
editor    of    "The  Christian  Advocate,"88  when  debating 

«3.    And  "ne  of  the  most  bitter  opponents  to  the  admission  of  the  women  lay- 
i  to  the  Methodist  General  Conference. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  503 

the  subject,  declared  that  he  would  oppose  the  admis- 
sion of  the  mother  of  our  Lord  into  the  ministry, 
the  debate  taking  on  most  unseemly  form.24  Miss 
Oliver  who  had  long  been  pastor  of  the  Willoughby 
Street  church,  in  Brooklyn,  appealed  to  the  General 
Conference  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  at  its 
session  in  Cincinnati,  May,  1880,  for  full  installment 
and  ordination,  saying  : 

"I  am  sorry  to  trouble  our  dear  mother  church  with 
any  perplexing  question,  but  it  presses  me  also,  and 
the  church  and  myself  must  decide  something.  I  am 
so  thoroughly  convinced  that  the  Lord  has  laid  com- 
mands upon  me  in  this  direction  that  it  becomes  with 
me  really  a  question  of  my  own  soul's  salvation."  She 
then  gave  the  reasons  that  induce  her  to  believe  that 
she  is  called  to  pastoral  work,  and  concluded  :  "I  have 
made  almost  every  conceivable  sacrifice  to  do  what  I 
believe  to  be  God's  will.  Brought  up  in  a  conserv- 
ative circle  in  New  York  City,  that  held  it  a  disgrace 
for  a  woman  to  work,  surrounded  with  the  comforts 
and  advantages  of  ample  means,  and  trained  in  the 
Episcopal  church,  I  gave  up  home,  friends  and  sup- 
port, went  counter  to  prejudices  that  had  become  sec- 
ond nature  to  me,  worked  several  years  to  constant 
exhaustion,  and  suffered  cold,  hunger  and  loneliness; 
the  things  hardest  for  me  to  bear  were  laid  upon  me. 
For  two  months  my  own  mother  would  not  speak  to 
me.  When  I  entered  the  house  she  turned  and  walked 
away,  and  when  I  sat  at  the  table  she  did  not  recog- 
nize me.  I  have  passed  through  tortures  to  which  the 
flames  of  martyrdom  would  be  nothing,  for  they  would 
end  in  a  day;  and  through  all  this  time  and  to-day  I 
could  turn  off  to  positions  of  comparative  ease  and 
profit.  I  ask  you,  fathers  and  brethren,  tell  me  what 
would  you  do  in  my  place?  Tell  me  what  would  you 
wish  the  church  to  do  toward  you,  were  you  in  my 
place?  Please  only  apply  the  golden  rule,  and  vote 
in  conference  accordingly." 

In  answer  to  this    powerful  and    noble    appeal,  and 

24.  As  reported  in  Syracuse,  New  York  "Sunday  Morning  Courier^'  March 
4th,  1877. 


5O4  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

in  reply  to  all  women  seeking  the  ministry  of  that 
church,  the  General  Conference  passed  this  resolu- 
tion: 

Resolved:  That  women  have  already  all  the  rights 
and  privileges  in  the  Methodist  church,  that  are  good 
for  them,  and  that  it  is  not  expedient  to  make  any 
change  in  the  books  of  discipline  that  would  open  the 
doors  for  their  ordination  to  the  ministry. 

The  General  Conference,  after  so  summarily  deciding 
what  was  for  the  spiritual  good  of  women,  in  thus 
refusing  to  recognize  their  equality  of  rights  to  the 
offices  of  that  church,  resolved  itself  as  a  whole  into 
a  political  convention,  adjourning  in  a  body  to  Chicago 
before  its  religious  business  was  finished,  in  order  that 
its  presence  might  influence  the  National  Republican 
Convention  there  assembled,  to  nominate  General 
Grant  for  a  third  term  to  the  presidency  of  the  United 
States;  General  Grant  being  in  affiliation  with  the 
Methodist  church. 

The  Congregational  church  is  placed  upon  record 
through  laws,  governing  certain  of  its  bodies,  which 
state  that: 

By  the  word  "church"  is  meant  the  adult  males  duly 
admitted  and  retained  by  the  First  Evangelical  church 
of  Cambridgeport,  present  at  any  regular  meeting  of 
said  church  and  voting  by  a  majority. 

TheNewYork  "Independent,"  of  February  24,  1881, 
commenting  upon  this  official  declaration  that  only 
"adult  males'*  are  to  be  considered  the  "church," 
says: 

The  above  is  Article  XIV.  of  the  by-laws  of  the 
society  connected  with  the  aforesaid  church.  It  is  a 
matter  of  gratitude  that  the  society,  if  it  forbids  fe- 
males to  vote  in  the  church,  yet  allows  them  to  pray 
and  to  help  the  society  raise  money. 

The  Rev,    W.  V.    Turnstall,  in   the  "Methodist  Re- 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  505 

corder,"  a  few  years  since,  gave  his  priestly  views  in 
regard  to  woman,  and  by  implication  those  of  the 
Methodist  church.  He  declared  woman  to  be  under 
the  curse  of  subjection  to  man,  a  curse  not  removable 
until  the  resurrection.  He  said  that  under  the  Mosaic 
law  woman  had  no  voice  in  anything;  that  she  could 
hold  no  office,  yet  did  so  in  a  few  instances  when  God 
wished  to  especially  humiliate  the  nation ;  that  she 
was  scheduled  as  a  higher  piece  of  property ;  that  even 
the  Bible  was  not  addressed  to  her  but  to  man  alone; 
woman  rinding  her  salvation  even  under  the  new  cov- 
enant, not  directly  through  Jesus,  but  approaching  him 
through  man;  his  points  were: 

First:  That  woman  is  under  a  curse  which  subjects 
her  to  man. 

Second:  This  curse  has  never  been  removed,  nor 
will  it  be  removed  until  the  resurrection. 

Third:  That  woman  under  the  Mosaic  law,  God's 
civil  law,  had  no  voice  in  anything.  That  she  was 
not  allowed  her  oath;  that  she  was  no  part  of  the 
congregation  of  Israel ;  that  her  genealogy  was  not 
kept;  that  no  notice  was  taken  of  her  birth  or  death, 
except  as  these  events  were  connected  with  some  man 
of  providence;  that  she  was  given  no  control  of  her 
children;  that  she  could  hold  no  office;  nor  did  she, 
except  in  a  few  instances,  when  to  reproach  and  hu- 
miliate the  nation,  God  suspended  his  own  law,  and 
made  an  instrument  of  women  for  the  time  being. 
That  she  offered  no  sacrifices,  no  redemption  money 
was  paid  for  her;  that  she  received  no  religious  rites; 
that  the  mother's  cleansing  was  forty  days  longer,  and 
the  gift  was  smaller  for  a  female  child  than  for  a  male; 
and  that  in  the  tenth  commandment — always  in  force 
— she  is  scheduled  as  a  higher  species  of  property; 
that  her  identity  was  completely  merged  in  that  of  her 
husband. 

Fourth:  That  for  seeking  to  hold  office  Miriam  was 
smitten  with  leprosy;    and    that    under  the  new    cove- 


506  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

nant  she  is  only  permitted  to  pray  or  prophesy  with 
her  head  covered,  which  accounts  for  the  fashion  of 
wearing  bonnets  in  public  to  this  day;  that  she  is  ex- 
pressly prohibited  from  rule  in  the  church  or  usurpa- 
tion of  authority  over  the  man. 

Fifth:  That  to  vote  is  to  rule,  voting  carrying  with 
it  all  the  collaterals  of  making,  expounding,  and  exe- 
cuting law;  that  God  has  withheld  from  woman  the 
right  to  rule,  either  in  the  church,  the  state  or  the 
family;  that  He  did  this  because  of  her  having  "brought 
sin  and  death  into  the  world,  and  all  our  woe." 

Sixth  :  That  the  Bible  is  addressed  to  man  and  not 
to  woman;  that  man  comes  to  God  through  Jesus,  and 
woman  comes  to  Jesus  through  man;  that  every  privi- 
lege the  wife  enjoys  she  but  receives  through  the  hus- 
band, for  God  has  declared  that  woman  shall  not  rule 
man,  but  be  subject  unto  him. 

A  more  explicit  statement  of  the  opinion  of  the 
church  regarding  woman  is  seldom  found.  Later  ac- 
tion of  the  Methodist  body  proves  its  agreement  with 
Rev.  Mr.  Turnstall.  The  General  Conference  of  that 
church  convened  May  i,  1888,  in  the  Metropolitan 
Opera  House,  New  York,  numbering  delegates  from 
every  part  of  the  United  States  as  well  as  many  from 
foreign  lands.  Among  these  delegates  were  sixteen 
women.  The  question  of  their  admission  came  up  the 
first  day.  The  senior  bishop,  Rev.  Thomas  Bowman, 
in  his  opening  remarks,  declared  that  body  to  stand 
in  the  presence  of  new  conditions,  in  that  they  found 
names  upon  the  roll  of  a  class  of  persons  whose  eli- 
gibility had  never  been  determined  by  the  high  tribunal 
of  the  church.  A  committee  was  appointed  to  report 
upon  their  admission.  Bishop  Merrill,  occupying  the 
chair  upon  the  second  day,  said  that  "for  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  the  conference,  women  had  been 
sent  as  delegates,  but  the  bishops  did  not  think  the 
women  were  eligible.     The    report  of    the    committee 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  507 

was  submitted,  which  declared  that  after  a  serious  dis- 
cussion they  had  become  convinced  that,  while  the 
rule  was  passed  relating  to  the  admission  of  lay  dele- 
gates to  the  General  Conference,  the  church  contem- 
plated admission  only  to  men  as  lay  delegates,  and 
that  under  ttje  constitution  and  laws,  women  were  not 
eligible.  The  committee  agreed  that  the  protest  against 
women  should  be  sustained,  and  the  conferences  from 
which  they  were  sent  be  notified  that  their  seats  were 
vacant.  A  long  discussion  ensued.  Rev.  John  Wiley, 
president  of  the  Drew  Theological  Seminary  of  the 
New  York  Conference,  spoke  against  woman's  admis- 
sion, saying: 

That  if  the  laws  of  the  church  were  properly  inter- 
preted they  would  prove  that  women  are  not  eligible 
and  then,  besides,  no  one  wanted  them  in  the  General 
Conference. 

Rev.  J.  R.  Day,  the  New  York  Conference,  argued 
against  the  admission  of  women,  saying: 

When  the  law  was  passed  for  the  admission  of  lay 
delegates  it  was  never  intended  that  women  should  be 
delegates  to  the  General  Conference.  It  is  proposed 
to-day  to  make  one  of  the  most  stupendous  pieces  of 
legislation  that  has  been  known  to  Christendom.  I 
am  not  opposed  to  woman  doing  the  work  that  she 
is  capable  of  doing  but  I  do  not  think  that  she 
should  intrude  upon  the  General  Conference.  Wo- 
man has  not  the  necessary  experience;  this  is  a  tre- 
mendous question. 

Rev.  Jacob  Rothweiler,  of  the  Central  German  Con- 
ference, asserted  that: 

The  opponents  of  the  report  are  trying  to  override 
the  constitution  of  the  church,  and  are  making  an 
effort  to  strike  at  the  conscientiousness  of  90  per  cent 
of  the  Christian  church  which  has  existed  for  the  last 
1,800  years.  The  history  of  Christianity  shows  that 
women  were  never  intended  to  vote. 


508  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

The  conference  was  seriously  divided  upon  this  ques- 
tion. Although  eventually  lost,  yet  many  clergymen 
permeated  with  the  spirit  of  advancing  civilization, 
voted  in  its  favor,  among  them  Rev.  Dr.  Hammond, 
of  Syracuse,  New  York,  a  delegate  for  the  episcopacy; 
while  arrayed  in  bitter  opposition  was  Rev.  Mr.  Buck- 
ley, editor  of  "The  Christian  Advocate,"  also  a  candidate 
for  the  bishopric,  and  the  man  that  when  the  question 
of  the  ordination  of  Miss  Oliver  came  up  a  few  years 
since,  declared  he  would  oppose  the  admission  of  the 
Mother  of  the  Lord  to  the  ministry.  His  remark  re- 
calls that  of  Tetzel,  the  great  Catholic  dealer  in  in- 
dulgences, given  in  another  part  of  this  work,  and 
illustrates  to  what  extent  of  blasphemy  the  opponents 
of  women's  equality  proceed.  It  was  not  until  the 
seventh  day  of  the  Conference  that  the  question  of 
woman's  admission  was  decided  in  the  negative,  and 
the  great  Methodist  Episcopal  church  put  itself  upon 
record  as  opposed  to  the  recognition  of  more  than  one- 
half  of  its  members.  The  women  delegates  were  not 
even  allowed  seats  upon  the  floor  during  the  debate. 
Mrs.  Nind,  president  of  the  Woman's  Foreign  Mis- 
sionary Society,  arose  to  vote,  but  was  not  counted, 
although  the  Woman's  Foreign  Missionary  societies  are 
making  converts  where  men  cannot  reach — in  the 
zenanas.  The  action  of  the  Conference  was  foreshad- 
owed by  that  of  Baltimore  a  few  weeks  previously, 
when  it  was  decided  that  women  missionaries  should 
not  be  permitted  to  administer  communion  in  the 
zenanas  as  it  would  open  the  door  for  their  ordina- 
tion to  the  ministry  and  this  despite  the  fact  that 
women  alone  are  admitted  to  the  zenanas.  At  the 
Methodist  minister's  bi-monthly  meeting,  Syracuse, 
N.  Y.,  near  time    of    the    General    Conference,    Rev. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  509 

Thomas  Tinsey,  of  Clyde,  read  a  paper  entitled  "Is 
it  advisable  to  make  women  of  the  church  eligible  to 
all  the  ecclesiastical  councils  and  the  ministerial  order 
of  the  church,"  quoting  Paul  in  opposition  to  giving 
her  a  voice,  saying: 

What  can  our  modern  advocates  of  licensing  and 
ordaining  women  and  electing  them  to  annual  confer- 
ences, do  with  the  command  to  the  Corinthians,  "Let 
your  women  keep  silence  in  the  church;  "  or  to  Tim- 
othy: "Let  the  women  learn  in  silence  and  all  subjec- 
tion," Paul  certainly  meant  something  by  such  teach- 
ing. The  position  taken  by  the  Fathers  of  Methodism 
appears  to  me  to  be  the  only  tenable  one,  viz:  that 
the  prohibition  applies  to  the  legislation  or  official 
business  of  the  church — precisely  the  kind  of  work 
contemplated  in  the  effort  to  make  them  eligible  to 
the  General  Conference,  and  to  Methodist  orders. 
Concerning  these  things,  "Let  them  learn  of  their 
husbands  at  home." 

Rev.  Mr.  Tinsey  farther  gave  his  opinion  as  to  the 
comparative  uselessness  of  woman.  He  was  able  to 
conceive  of  no  good  reason  for  her  creation,  aside  from 
that  of  burden  bearer  in  the  process  of  reproduction, 
saying: 

Woman  is  that  part  or  side  of  humanity  upon  which 
the  great  labor,  care  and  burden  of  reproduction  is 
placed.  We  can  conceive  of  no  good  reason  for  mak- 
ing women  aside  from  this.  Man  is  certainly  better 
suited  to  all  other  work." 

After  discussion,  the  ministers  present  generally 
agreed  that,  because  of  motherhood,  woman  should  be 
debarred  from  such  official  recognition. 

The  final  ground  of  women's  exclusion  as  delegates 
to  the  General  Conference,  is  most  noticeable  inasmuch 
as  appeal  was  ultimately  made  to  the  State.  Upon 
the  seventh  day's  session  it  was  resolved  to  suspend 
the  rules  and  continue   the    debate    on  the    admission 


5IO  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

of  women  as  lay-delegates.  So  anxious  were  men  to 
speak  that  forty-one  delegates  at  once  sprung  to  their 
feet  and  claimed  the  floor.  Judge  Taylor,  a  lay  dele- 
gate from  the  St.  Louis  conference,  walking  down  the 
aisle  with  a  number  of  law  books  under  his  arm,  pro- 
ceeded to  argue  the  question  on  constitutional  grounds, 
saying: 

"It  would  do  much  harm  to  admit  women  at  the 
present  time.  There  are  bishops  to  be  elected  and 
other  important  matters  to  be  voted  on,  and  if  women 
are  admitted  and  allowed  to  vote,  and  it  should  subse- 
quently be  decided  that  women  should  not  be  entitled 
to  seats,  the  acts  of  the  present  General  Conference 
would  be  illegal  and  unconstitutional." 

While  claiming,  personally,  to  favor  women's  ad- 
mission, he  quoted  law  to  sustain  their  rejection,  and 
wished  the  question  to  be  submitted  to  a  vote  of  the 
church.  The  'vote  of  the  church/  as  shown  by  the 
adoption  of  Rev.  F.  B.  Neely's  amendment,  signifying 
the   ministers  present    at    annual   conferences.25     The 

25.  Rev.  F.  B.  Neely,  of  Philadelphia,  said  that  he  was  in  favor  of  submitting 
the  question  to  the  annual  conferences.  He  offered  the  following  amendment  to 
the  report  of  the  committee: 

But  since  there  is  great  interest  in  this  question,  and  since  the  church  gener- 
ally should  be  consulted  in  regard  to  such  an  important  matter,  therefore. 

Resolved:  That  we  submit  to  the  annual  conferences  the  proposition  to  amend 
the  second  restrictive  rule  by  amending  the  words  "and  said  delegates  may  be 
men  or  women"  after  the  words  "two  lay  delegates"  for  an  annual  conference  so 
that  it  would  read,  "Nor  of  more  than  two  lay  delegates  for  an  annual  conference, 
and  the  said  delegates  may  be  men  or  women." 

The  amendment  was  seconded  by  Dr.  Paxton. —  Telegram. 

New  York,  May  12.— The  debate  on  the  admission  of  women  delegates  was  one 
of  the  most  lengthy  in  the  history  of  the  church.  It  occupied  the  time  of  the  con- 
ference during  the  larger  part  of  six  sessions.  It  is  the  common  remark,  too,  that 
never  before  was  a  subject  contested  in  this  body  with  such  obstinacy,  not  to  say 
bitterness.  The  struggle  to  obtain  recognition  from  the  chair  was  a  revelation  to 
those  who  did  not  know  previously  how  fond  Methodists  are  of  speaking  in  meet- 
ing. The  instant  the  chairman's  gavel  fell,  announcing  the  termination  of  one 
speech,  fifty  delegates  or  more  were  on  their  feet,  and  from  fifty  stentorian  voices 
rang  out  the  pitiful  appeal,  "Mr.  Chairman!"  This  was  the  order  of  affairs  from 
the  beginning  of  the  debate  to  the  close.  One  delegate  who  was  finally  recog- 
nized proved  to  be  so  hoarse  from  his  protracted  efforts  to  get  the  floor  that  it 
was  with  difficulty  he  could  be  heard  when  he  did  get  it— Correspondence,  Syra- 
cuse. N.  Y.  Sunday  Herald,  May  13. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  511 

vote  upon  this  amendment,  which  excluded  women 
from  seats  in  the  General  Conference,  submitting  their 
eligibility  to  the  decision  of  ministers  of  the  annual 
conferences,  was  adopted  237  to  198.  It  thus  requires 
three-fourths  vote  of  the  members  present  and  vot- 
ing at  the  annual  conferences,  this  vote  to  be  ratified 
by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  the  General  Conference  in  or- 
der to  woman's  acceptance  as  lay  delegate  to  such 
General  Conference.26  Aside  from  the  fact  of  an 
appeal  to  the  civil  law  for  the  exclusion  of  woman, 
thus  showing  the  close  union  of  church  and  state,  one 
other  important  point  must  be  noticed.  In  the  decla- 
ration that  the  church  should  be  consulted  in  regard 
to  such  an  important  matter,  that  body  was  defined  as 
the  ministers  of  the  annual  conference,  laymen  not 
here  ranking  as  part  of  the  church.  The  lay  delegates, 
unnarrowed  by  theological  studies  were,  as  a  body, 
favorable  to  woman's  admission.  Nor  did  they  refrain 
from  criticising  the  clergy,  declaring  that  the  episco- 
pacy did  not  interpret  the  law  of  the  church,  this 
power  resting  in  the  General  Conference.  But  one 
more  favoring  vote  would  have  tied  the  question. 
Gen.  Samuel  H.  Hurst,  dairy  and  food  commissioner 
of  Ohio,  the  first  layman  to  gain  the  floor,  defended 
the  right  of  women  to  admission.      He  alluded    to  the 

26.  The  final  vote,  excluding  women  from  this  conference  and  submitting  the 
question  of  their  eligibility  to  the  annual  conferences,  stood:  To  exclude  and  sub- 
mit, 237;  against,  198 — making  a  majority  of  39  only  of  the  total  vote,  while  the 
laymen  were  so  evenly  divided  that  the  change  of  one  vote  would  have  tied  them. 
If  now  the  annual  conference  shall  decree  by  a  three-fourths  vote  of  all  the  min- 
isters present  and  voting,  that  women  are  eligible,  and  if  four  years  hence  the  gen- 
eral conference  by  a  two-thirds  vote  shall  ratify  that  decree,  the  fair  sisters  will 
thereafter  have  free  course  in  that  body.  Otherwise  they  will  be  tolerated  only 
as  mere  lookers-on.  From  the  fact,  that  many  who  voted  to  submit  the  matter  to 
the  annual  conference  did  so,  not  because  they  wish  the  women  to  come  in,  but 
merely  as  the  best  method  of  getting  rid  of  a  troublesome  question  for  the  time 
being,  it  looks  as  though  their  chances  of  gaining  admittance  as  delegates  four 
years  hence  were  little  better,  if  any,  than  in  the  present  instance.—  Sunday  Her* 
aid  Syracuse,  N.  Y.  May  13. 


J12  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

opponents  of  the  women  as  "old  fogies."  He  criti- 
cized the  bishop's  address. 

"The  episcopacy  does  not  interpret  the  law  of  the 
church,  but  the  General  Conference  does.  Woman 
does  not  come  here  as  a  strong-minded  person  de- 
manding admittance,  but  she  comes  as  representative 
of  the  lay  conference.  The  word  'laymen'  was  inter- 
preted to  mean  all  members  of  the  church  not  repre- 
sented in  the  ministry.  That  is  the  law,  and  if  women 
are  'laymen'  they  are  entitled  to  admission." 

The  Southern  Baptist  Association,  meeting  in  New 
Orleans  in  July  of  the  same  year,  refused  to  admit 
women  by  a  vote  of  42  to  40.  The  church  as  of  old, 
is  still  strenuous  in  its  efforts  to  influence  legislation. 
An  amendment  to  the  National  Constitution  is  pressed 
by  the  National  Reform  Association,  recognizing  the 
sectarian  idea  of  God;  another  placing  marriage  and 
divorce  under  control  of  the  general  government  by 
uniform  laws;  while  priestly  views  upon  the  political 
freedom  of  woman  are  thrust  into  the  very  faces  of  our 
law  makers.87  The  following  portions  of  a 
sermon  preached  at  the  Cathedral  of  the  Holy  Cross, 
Boston,  February  21,  1886,  by  the  Rev.  Father  J.  P. 
Bodfish,  were  printed  and  distributed  among  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  that  spring  by 
the  opponents  of  woman  suffrage:28 

Not  that  I  would  have  woman  step  out  of  her  sphere; 
the  man  is  the  natural  protector,  the  father,  the  law- 
giver, of  his  family;  nor  would  I  counsel  wives  to 
usurp  the  places  of  their  husbands  at  the  polls.  I  be- 
lieve this  to  be  one  of  the  errors  of  modern   times,  to 

27.  THE  PRIESTHOOD. 

Now,  too  oft  the  priesthood  wait 

At  the  threshold  of  the  state — 

Waiting  for  the  beck  and  nod 

Of  its  power  as  law  and  God.— From  Whittier's  "Curs* 
9/  the  Charter  Breakers. 
a8.    From  "The  Woman's  Journal."  Boston. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  513 

try  to  unsex  woman,  and  take  her  from  the  high  place 
she  occupies  and  drag  her  into  the  arena  of  public 
life.  What  has  she  to  do  there?  We  might  as  well 
try  to  drag  down  the  angels  to  take  part  in  the  menial 
affairs  of  this  world  as  to  take  woman  from  the  high 
place  she  occupies  in  the  family,  where  'tis  her  priv- 
ilege and  duty  to  guide,  to  counsel  and  to  instruct — 
to  lead  that  family  in  the  way  of  righteousness.  It  is 
but  offering  her  a  degradation  ;  Almighty  God  never 
intended  it.  The  charm,  the  influence  of  woman,  is 
in  that  purity  that  comes  from  living  in  a  sphere  apart 
from  us.  God  forbid  that  we  should  ever  see  the  day 
that  a  man,  a  husband  or  a  father,  is  to  find  his  will 
opposed  and  thwarted  at  the  polls  by  his  daughter  or 
his  wife.  Then  farewell  to  that  reverence  which  be- 
longs to  the  character  of  woman. 

She  puts  herself  on  an  equal  footing  with  man  when 
she  steps  down  from  that  place  where  every  one  re- 
gards her  with  reverence,  and  becomes  unsexed  by 
striving  to  make  laws  which  she  cannot  enforce,  and 
taking  upon  herself  duties  for  which  she  is  altogether 
unfitted. 

Decrees  of  various  characters  presenting  woman  as 
a  being  of  different  natural  and  spiritual  rights  from 
man,  are  constantly  formulated  by  the  churches.  The 
Plenary  Council  of  Baltimore,  1884,  busied  itself  in 
the  enactment  of  canons  directly  bearing  upon  marriage 
and  divorce,  re-affirming  the  sacramental  character  of 
marriage  and  declaring  that  marriages  under  civil  rites 
should  be  resented  by  the  whole  Catholic  world  This 
council  was  preceded  by  an  encyclical  from  the  Pope, 
laying  out  its  plans  by  work  yet  leaving  it  within  the 
power  of  the  diocesan  bishops  to  promulgate  its  can- 
ons according  to  their  own  wisdom.  Consequently, 
not  until  three  years  later  were  those  upon  marriage 
published  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  at  which  time  the 
archbishop  of  San  Francisco,  the  bishops  of  Monterey, 
Los  Angeles  and    Grass  Valley,   addressed    a  pastoral 


514  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

letter  to  the  Catholics    of   those  regions,    condemning 
civil    marriage    as  a  sin  and    sacrilege,    illegal,  and  a 
"horrible    concubinage."     It  was    farther    stated    that 
marriage  unblessed  by  a  priest,   subjected   the  parties 
to  excommunication.     At  the  still   later  Catholic  Con- 
gress, in  honor    of  the    hundredth    anniversary    of  the 
Catholic  Hierarchy  in  America,  divorces  were  affirmed 
to  be  the  plague  of  civilization,  a  discredit  to  the  gov- 
ernment,   a    degradation    of    the    female    sex,    and    a 
standing  menace  to  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  bond. 
In  noting  these    canons    of   the  Plenary    Council,  and 
the  resolutions  of  the  Catholic  Congress,  it  should  be 
borne  in  mind  that   the    chief  secret    of    the  long-con- 
tinued power  of  the  Catholic  church  has  been  its  hold 
upon  marriage  and  the  subordination  of  woman  in  this 
relation.    To  these  celibate  priests,  nothing  connected 
with  woman  is  sacred.     Celibacy  and  the  sacramental 
nature  of  marriage    are  each  of    them  based    upon  the 
theory  of  woman's  created  inferiority  and  original  sin. 
Priestly  power  over    marriage,  and    the    confessional, 
through  which  means  it  is  able  to  wrest  all  family  and 
state  secrets  to  its  own   use,  are  powers    that  will  not 
be  peaceably  relinquished.  Their  destruction  will  come 
through  the  growing   intelligence  of   people,  and  the 
responsibility    of  political     self-government.      These 
will  insure  confidence  in  the  validity  of  civil  marriage 
and  a  belief  in  the  personal  rights  of  individuals.    To 
woman,  the  education    of    political    responsibility    is 
most  essential  in  order  to  free  her  from  church  bonds, 
and    is     therefore   most    energetically  opposed  by  the 
church.   In  1890,  a  number  of  Catholic  ladies  of  Paris 
formed  a  union  for  the    emancipation  of   woman  from 
different    kinds    of    social  thraldom."    Their  first  at- 

19.    Headed  by  Mmt.  ArtU  <U  Valsayn. 


THE   CHURCH   OF  TO-DAY  <Jl5 

tack  was  upon  the  priesthood,  whom  they  declared 
the  mortal  adversary  of  woman's  advancement,  affirm- 
ing that  every  woman  "who  abets  the  abbes  is  an  en- 
emy of  her  sex."  This  open  rebellion  of  Catholic  la- 
dies against  the  power  of  the  hierarchy,  is  a  signifi- 
cant sign  of  woman's  advancing  freedom. 

All  canons,  decrees,  resolutions  and  laws  of  the 
church,  especially  bearing  upon  the  destinies  of  wo- 
man are  promulgated  without  the  hearing  of  her  voice, 
either  in  confirmation  or  rejection.  She  is  simply 
legislated  for  as  a  slave.  Two  of  the  later  triennial  con- 
claves of  the  Episcopal  church  of  the  United  States, 
energetically  debated  the  subject  of  divorce,  not,  how- 
ever, arriving  at  sufficient  unanimity  of  opinion  for 
the  enactment  of  a  canon.  When  Mazzini,  the  Italian 
patriot,  was  in  this  country,  1852,  he  declared  the  de- 
struction of  the  priesthood  to  be  our  only  surety  for 
continued  freedom,  saying: 

They  will  be  found  as  in  Italy,  the  foes  of  mankind, 
and  if  the  United  States  expects  to  retain  even  its  po- 
litical liberties,  it  must  get  rid  of  the  priesthood  as 
Italy  intends  to  do.30 

Frances  Wright,  that  clear-seeing,  liberty-loving, 
Scotch  free-thought  woman,  noted  the  dangerous  pur- 
pose and  character  of  the  Christian  party  in  politics, 
even  as  early  as  1829;  and  the  present  effort  of  this 
body,  now  organized  as  the  "National  Reform  Associa- 
tion" with  its  adjunct  "The  American  Sabbath  Union," 
officered  by  priests  and  influential  members  of  the 
Woman's  Christian  Temperance  Union,  and  kindred 
bodies,  is  a  perpetual  menace  to  the  civil  and  religious 
liberties  of  the  United  States.  Its  effort  for  an  amend- 
ment to  the  Federal    Constitution  which    shall  recog- 

30.  When  the  temporal  kingdom  took  possession  of  Italy,  the  rate  of  ignor- 
ance was  90  per  cent.    It  has  now  been  reduced  to  45  per  cent. 


5l6  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

nize  the  United  Sates  as  a  Christian  nation,  is  a  deter- 
mined endeavor  toward  the  union  of  church  and  state ; 
and  its  success  in  such  attempt  will  be  the  immediate 
destruction  of  both  civil  and  religious  liberty.  That 
such  a  party  now  openly  exists,  its  intentions  no  secret, 
is  evidence  that  the  warnings  of  Italian  patriot  and 
the  Scotch  free  thinker  were  not  without  assured 
foundation. 

As  a  body,  the  church  opposes  education  for  woman, 
and  all  the  liberalizing  tendencies  of  the  last  thirty- 
five  or  forty  years,  which  have  opened  new  and  varied 
industries  to  women  and  secured  to  wives  some  relief 
from  their  general  serf  condition.  Bishop  Littlejohn, 
of  the  Episcopal  church,  at  the  Triennial  Conclave  of 
bishops,  1883,  preached  as  his  "triennial  charge"  up- 
on "The  Church  and  the  Family,"  presenting  the 
general  church  idea  as  to  woman's  inferiority  and  sub- 
ordination. He  made  authoritative  use  of  the  words 
"sanctities  of  home,"  a  phrase  invented  by  the  clergy 
as  a  method  of  holding  woman  in  bondage;  directed 
the  church  to  "strictly  impose  her  doctrines  as  to  mar- 
riage and  divorce,  clash  as  they  may  with  the  spirit 
of  the  times  and  the  laws  of  the  state  "  (thus  emu- 
lating the  Catholic  doctrines  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
church).  He  declared  that  in  any  respect  to  change 
the  relation  established  by  God  himself  between  hus- 
band and  wife,  was  rank  infidelity,  no  matter  what 
specious  disguise  such  change  might  assume,  explicitly 
declaring  the  authority  of  the  church  over  marriage, 
as  against  the  authority  of  the  state ;  protesting  against 
omission  of  the  word  "obey"  from  the  marriage  ser- 
vice, and  the  control  of  the  wife  over  her  own  earn- 
ings and  expenditures,  saying : 

"If  it  be  outside  the  province  of  the  states  to  treat 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  517 

marriage  as  more  than  a  contract  between  a  man  and 
a  woman,  the  church  must  make  it  understood,  as  it 
is  not,  that  it  is  inside  her  province  to  treat  it  as  a 
thing  instituted  of  God.  Practically,  we  have  reached 
a  point  where  the  wife  may  cease  to  have  property 
interests  in  common  with  her  husband,  may  control 
absolutely  her  own  means  of  living,  and  determine  for 
herself  the  scale  of  expenditures  that  will  suit  her 
tastes  or  her  caprices.  The  man  is  no  longer  the 
head  of  the  household,  the  husband.  It  has  been  made 
an  open  question  whether  the  man  or  his  wife  will 
fulfill  that  function,  and  'a  community  of  interests, 
with  the  recognized  authority  of  the  husband  to  rule 
the  wife,  and  the  recognized  duty  of  the  wife  to  obey 
that  authority,  is  no  longer  deemed  expedient  or  nec- 
essary.' This  rebellion  against  the  old  view  of  mar- 
riage is  so  strong  that  in  many  cases  the  word  'obey' 
is  omitted  from  the  marriage  service." 

Even  among  Christianized  Indians  we  find  different 
laws  governing  man  and  woman.  In  1886,  the  gov- 
ernor of  Maine  paid  a  visit  to  the  governor  of  the 
Passamaquody  Indians,  at  a  time  when  a  large  council 
was  in  progress  upon  the  St.  Croix  reservation.  This 
council  first  assembled  at  the  chapel,  where  the  Re- 
vised Statutes — the  whole  basis  of  government  of  the 
Passamaquodies — are  posted.  These  statutes  having 
been  approved  by  Bishop  Healy,  of  Portland,  are  also 
looked  upon  as  canons  of  the  church.81 

The  statutes  principally  affecting  women,  are: 

Third :  No  woman  who  is  separated  from  her  hus- 
band shall  be  admitted  to  the  sacrament,  or  to  any 
place  in  the  church  except  the  porch  in  summer  and 
the  back  seat  in  winter,  unless  by  the  consent  of  the 
bishop. 

Fourth  :  Any  woman  who  admits  men  into  her  house 
by  night  shall  be  treated  as  a  criminal  and  delivered 
to  the  courts. 

31.    The  "Boston  Herald?  Ang.  17,  x886,  beading  an  article  upon  these  statutes, 
"Copper  Colored  Blue  Laws," 


5l8  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

Fifth:  Any  woman  who  is  disobedient  to  her  hus- 
band, any  common  scold  or  drunkard,  shall  not  be 
permitted  to  enter  the  church,  except  by  permission 
of  the  priest. 

It  will  be  noted  that  these    statutes  forbid    the  sac- 
rament to  the  woman  who  is  separated  from  her  hus- 
„  band,  not  even  permitting  her    an  accustomed   seat  in 
church.     She  must    remain    in  the    porch   during    the 
summer  and  in  a  back  seat  during    the   winter,  except 
"the  bishop"  otherwise  permits.     Also  the  woman  not 
rendering  obedience  to  her  husband,  is  denied  permis- 
sion to  enter  the  church  except  under  priestly  permit 
The  Christian  theory  of  woman's  inferiority  and  subor- 
dination to  man,  is  as  fully  endorsed  by  these  statutes 
as  in  the  mediaeval    priestly  instruction  to  husbands. ?<? 
No  profession  as    constantly    appeals  to    the    lower 
nature  as  the  priestly,  the   emotions    rather    than  rea- 
son, are  constantly  invoked;  ambition,  love  of  power, 
hope  of  reward,  fear  of  punishment,  are  the  incentives 
presented  and  in  no  instance  are  such  incentives  more 
fully  made  use  of  than  for  purposes  of   sustaining   the 
supremacy    of  man  over  woman.     The  teaching  of  the 
church  cannot  fail  to  impress   woman  with  the  feeling 
that  if   she    expects    education,    or    even    opportunity 
of  full  entrance  into  business,  she    must  not   heed  the 
admonitions    of  the    priesthood,  when,  as  by  Dr.  Dix, 
she  is  contemptuously  forbidden    to   enter   the  profes- 
sions on  the  ground    that  God    designed  these    offices 
alone  for  man.   When  women  sought  university  honors 
at  Oxford,  a  few  years  since,  many  "incredibly  foolish" 
letters,  said  "London  Truth,"  were  written   by  its  op- 

32.  A  husband  is  entitled  to  punish  his  wife  when  he  sees  fit.  At  first  he  is  to 
use  remonstrances;  if  these  do  not  avail,  he  is  to  have  recourse  to  more  severe 
punishment. 

The  confessor  is  at  first  bound  not  to  pay  much  heed  to  women  complaining  of 
their  husbands,  because  women  are  habitually  inclined  to  lie. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  519 

ponents,  who  were  chiefly  clergymen.  Canon  Liddon's 
influence  was  against  the  statute;  the  Dean  of  Nor- 
wich referred  to  it  as  "an  attempt  to  defeat  divine 
Providence  and  Holy  Scripture."  Dr.  Gouldbourne 
thought  it  would  "unsex  woman."33 

"There  is  no  sin,"  said  Buddha,  "  but  ignorance,"  yet 
according  to  Rector  Dix,  Rev.  S.  W.  Turnstall,  Dr. 
Craven  and  the  priesthood  of  the  present  day,  in  com- 
mon with  the  earlier  church,  woman's  normal  condition 
is  that  of  ignorance,  and  education  is  the  prerogative 
of  man  alone;  and  yet  the  dangers  of  ignorance  have 
by  no  means  been  fathomed,  although  the  latest  in- 
vestigations show  the  close  relation  between  knowl- 
edge and  life.  That  as  intelligence  is  diffused,  there 
is  a  corresponding  increase  of  longevity,  is  proven; 
the  most  uneducated  communities  showing  the  greatest 
proportion  of  deaths.  Ignorance  and  the  death  rate 
are  parts  of  the  same  question;  education  and  length 
of  life  are  proportionately  synonymous.  Statistics 
gathered  in  England,  Wales  and  Ireland  a  few  years 
since  showed  the  percentage  of  infantile  deaths  to  be 
much  greater  in  those  portions  where  the  mother  could 
not  read  and  write,  than  where  the  mother  had  suffi- 
cient education  to  read  a  newspaper  and  write  her  own 
name.  In  districts  where  there  was  no  other  appre- 
ciable difference  except  that  of  education,  the  mortal- 
ity was  the  largest  in  the  most  ignorant  districts. 

In  deprecating  education  for  women,  no  organized 
body  in  the  world  has  so  clearly  proven  its  own  tyran- 
nous ignorance  as  has  the  priesthood,  and  no  body  has 
shown  itself  so  fully   the  enemy  of  mankind.   Church 

33.  The  scene  in  the  convocation  was  animated,  the  public  at  large  favoring 
the  women.  The  senior  Proctor  being  slow  in  his  figuring,  one  of  the  "Gods  in 
the  Gallery"  becoming  impatient  for  the  announcement  of  the  numbers,  shouted 
"Call  in  one  of  the  ladies  to  help  yon,  sir." 


520  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

teaching  and  centuries  of  repression  acting  through 
the  laws  of  heredity  have  lessened  woman's  physical 
size,  depressed  her  mental  action,  subjugated  her 
spirit,  and  crushed  her  belief  in  her  right  to  herself 
and  the  proper  training  of  her  own  children.  The 
church,  in  its  opposition  to  woman's  education  through 
the  ages,  has  literally  killed  off  the  inhabitants  of  the 
world  with  much  greater  rapidity  than  war,  pestilence, 
or  famine;  more  than  one-half  the  children  born  into 
the  world  have  soon  died  because  of  the  tyranny  and 
ignorance  of  the  priesthood.84  The  potential  phys- 
ical energy  of  mankind  thus  destroyed  can  in  a  meas- 
ure be  estimated,  but  no  one  can  fathom  the  infinitely 
greater  loss  of  mental  and  moral  force  brought  about 
through  condemnation  of  knowledge  to  woman;  only 
by  induction  can  it  even  be  surmised.  Lecky  points 
out  the  loss  to  the  world  because  so  many  of  its  purest 
characters  donned  the  garb  of  monk  or  nun.  That 
injury  was  immediately  perceptible,  but  in  the  denial 
of  education  and  freedom  to  woman  more  than  ninety 
per  cent  of  the  moral  and  physical  energy  of  the  world 
has  literally  been  suffocated,  and  owing  to  ignorance 
and  lack  of  independent  thought  this  loss  is  as  yet 
scarcely  recognized.  So  dense  the  pall  of  ignorance 
still  overshadowing  the  world  that  even  woman  her- 
self does  not  yet  conjecture  the  injury  that  has  been 
done  her,  or  of  what  she  and  her  children  have  been 
deprived.  Nor  has  the  world  yet  roused  to  a  full  con- 
sciousness of  the  mischief  to  mankind  that  has  been 
perpetrated  through  the  falsehood  and  ignorant  pre- 
sumption of  those  claiming  control  over  its  dearest 
rights  and    interests.     Resistance    to    the  wrong    thus 

34.    In  Egypt,  where  women  received  the  same  education  as  men,  very  few 
children  died — a  fact  noted  in  the  absence  of  child  mummies. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  TODAY  521 

done  the  world  has  been  less  possible  because  perpe- 
trated in  the  name  of  God  and  religion.  It  has  caused 
tens  of  thousands  of  women  to  doubt  their  equality 
of  right  with  man  in  education,  to*  disbelieve  they 
possess  the  same  authority  to  interpret  the  Bible  or 
present  its  doctrines  as  man;  neither,  having  been  de- 
prived of  education,  do  they  believe  themselves  to  be 
man's  political  equal,  or  that  they  possess  equal  rights 
with  him  in  the  household.  This  degradation  of  wo- 
man's moral  nature  is  the  most  direful  result  of  the 
teaching  of  the  church  in  regard  to  her.  A  loss  of 
faith  in  one's  own  self,  disbelief  in  one's  own  right 
to  the  fullest  cultivation  of  one's  own  powers,  proceeds 
from  a  debasement  of  the  moral  sentiments.  Self-reli- 
ance, self-respect,  self-confidence,  are  acquired  through 
that  cultivation  of  the  intellectual  faculties  which  has 
been  denied  to  woman.  Rev.  Dr.  Charles  Little,  of 
the  Syracuse  University,  says :  "In  the  report  of  a  ser- 
mon of  a  distinguished  theologian  which  appeared  not 
long  ago,  this  striking  passage  occurred:  If  I  were 
to  choose  between  Christianity  as  a  life  and  Christian- 
ity as  a  dogma,  I  would  choose  Christianity  as  a  dog- 
ma". Judging  from  its  treatment  of  woman  and  the 
many  recent  trials  for  heresy,  dogma  rather  than  life 
is  the  general  spirit  of  the  churches  everywhere.  It  is 
dogma  that  has  wrecked  true  religion;  it  is  dogma 
that  has  crushed  humanity ;  it  is  dogma  that  has  cre- 
ated two  codes  of  morals;  that  has  inculcated  the  doc- 
trine of  original  sin;  that  has  degraded  womanhood; 
that  has  represented  divinity  as  possessing  every  evil 
attribute. 

From  all  these  incontrovertible  facts  in  church  and 
state,  we  see  that  both  religion  and  government  are 
essentially  masculine  in  their  present  forms  and  devel- 


522  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

opment.  All  the  evils  that  have  resulted  from  digni- 
fying one  sex  and  degrading  the  other  may  be  traced 
to  one  central  error,  a  belief  in  a  trinity  of  masculine 
gods,  in  one  from  which  the  feminine  element  is  wholly 
eliminated;  and  yet  in  the  [scriptural  account  of  the 
simultaneous  creation  of  man  and  woman,  the  text 
plainly  recognizes  the  feminine  as  well  as  the  mascu- 
line element  in  the  God-head,  and  declares  the  equali- 
ty of  the  sexes  in  goodness,  wisdom  and  power.  Gen- 
esis i,  26-27. 

And  God  said,  Let  us  make  man  in  our  own  image, 
after  our  likeness,  and  so  God  created  man  in  his  own 
image;  in  the  image  of  God  created  He  him,  male  and 
female  created  He  them,  and  gave  them  dominion  over 
the  fish  of  the  sea  and  over  the  fowl  of  the  air,  and 
over  every  living  thing  that  moveth  upon  the  earth. 

In  nothing  has  the  ignorance  and  weakness  of  the 
church  been  more  fully  shown  than  in  its~controversies 
in  regard  to  the  creation.  From  time  of  the  "Fathers" 
to  the  present  hour,  despite  its  assertion  and  its  dog- 
mas, the  church  has  ever  been  engaged  in  discussions 
upon  the  Garden  of  Eden,  the  serpent,  woman,  man, 
and  God  as  connected  in  one  inseparable  relation. 
Amid  all  the  evils  attributed  to  woman,  her  loss  of 
Paradise,  introduction  of  sin  into  the  world  and  the 
consequent  degradation  of  mankind,  yet  Eve,  and 
through  her,  all  women  have  found  occasional  de- 
fenders. A  book  printed  in  Amsterdam,  1700,  in  a 
series  of  eleven  reasons,  threw  the  greater  culpability 
upon  Adam,  saying: 

First :  The  serpent  tempted  her  before  she  thought 
of  the  tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  and  suffered 
herself  to  be  persuaded  that  not  well  understood  his 
meaning. 

Second:  That  believing  that  God  had  not  given 
such  prohibition  she  eat  the  fruit. 


THE   CHURCH  OF  TO-DAY  523 

Third  :  Sinning  through  ignorance  she  committed 
a  less  heinous  crime  than  Adam. 

Fourth :  That  Eve  did  not  necessarily  mean  the 
penalty  of  eternal  death,  for  God's  decree  only  im- 
ported that  man  should  die  if  he  sinned  against  his 
conscience. 

Fifth:  That  God  might  have  inflicted  death  on  Eve 
without  injustice,  yet  he  resolved,  so  great  is  his 
mercy  toward  his  works,  to  let  her  live,  in  (that)  she 
had  not  sinned  maliciously. 

Sixth:  That  being  exempted  from  the  punishment 
contained  in  God's  decree,  she  might  retain  all  the 
prerogatives  of  her  sex  except  those  that  were  not  in- 
cidental with  the  infirmities  to  which  God  condemned 
her. 

Seventh:  That  she  retained  in  particulars  the  pre- 
rogative of  bringing  forth  children  who  had  a  right  to 
eternal  happiness  on  condition  of  obeying  the  new 
Adam. 

Eighth:  That  as  mankind  was  to  proceed  from 
Adam  and  Eve,  Adam  was  preserved  alive  only  be- 
cause his  preservation  was  necessary  for  the  procrea- 
tion of  children. 

Ninth:  That  it  was  by  accident  therefore,  that  the 
sentence  of  death  was  not  executed  on  him,  but  that 
otherwise  he  was  more  (justly)  punished  than  his 
wife. 

Tenth  :  That  she  was  not  driven  out  from  Paradise 
as  he  was,  but  was  only  obliged  to  leave  it  to  find  out 
Adam  in  the  earth ;  and  that  it  was  with  full  privi- 
lege of  returning  thither  again. 

Eleventh:  That  the  children  of  Adam  and  Eve  were 
subject  to  eternal  damnation,  not  as  proceeding  from 
Eve,  but  as  proceeding  from  Adam. 

In  1580,  but  three  hundred  years  since,  an  inquiry 
set  on  foot  as  to  the  language  of  Paradise,  resulted  in 
the  statement  that  God  spoke  Danish;  Adam,  Swe- 
dish; and   the    serpent,  French.     Eve    doubtless    was 


524  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STAT1 

conceded  to  have  spoken  all  three  languages,  as  she 
conversed  with  God,  with  Adam,  and  with  the  serpent. 
Hieronymus,  a  Father  of  the  Church,  credited  Eve 
with  possessing  a  much  finer  constitution  than  Adam, 
and  in  that  respect  as  superior  to  him.86  Thus, 
during  the  ages,  the  church  through  its  "Fathers"  and 
its  priests  has  devoted  itself  to  a  discussion  of  the 
most  trivial  questions  concerning  woman,  as  well  as 
to  the  formation  of  most  oppressive  canons  against 
her,  and  although  as  shown,  she  has  found  an  occa- 
sional defender,  and  even  claimants  for  her  superiority 
upon  certain  points,  yet  such  discussions  have  had  no 
effect  upon  the  general  view  in  which  the  church  has 
presented  her,  as  one  accursed  of  God  and  man. 

35.  "Eve  lived  940  years,  giving;  birth  to  a  boy  and  a  firl  every  year.  Eve  lived 
ten  years  longer  than  Adam.  They  most  give  this  first  woman  the  best  constitu, 
tion  in  the  world  for  while  her  husband  lived  930  years  and  communicated  to  his 
sons  for  several  generations  the  principle  of  so  long  a  life  (which  is  no  less  appli- 
cable to  Eve  than  to  him),  he  mast  have  been  of  very  vigorous  constitution;  •'•  • 
turn  the  thing  as  you  will  it  will  always  be  an  argument  from  the  greater  to  the 
leas  to  show  that  Eve's  body  was  better  constituted  than  that  of  her  husband." 


CHAPTER  X. 

PAST,    PRESENT,  FUTURE. 

The  most  important  struggle  in  the  history  of  the 
church  is  that  of  woman  for  liberty  of  thought  and  the 
right  to  give  that  thought  to  the  world.  As  a  spiritual 
force  the  church  appealed  to  barbaric  conception 
when  it  declared  woman  to  have  been  made  for  man, 
first  in  sin  and  commanded  to  be  under  obedience. 
Holding  as  its  chief  tenet  a  belief  in  the  inherent 
wickedness  of  woman,  the  originator  of  sin,  as  its  se- 
quence the  sacrifice  of  a  God  becoming  necessary,  the 
church  has  treated  her  as  alone  under  a  "curse"  for 
whose  enforcement  it  declared  itself  the  divine  instru- 
ment. Woman's  degradation  under  it  dating  back  to 
its  earliest  history,  while  the  nineteenth  century  still 
shows  religious  despotism  to  have  its  stronghold  in 
the  theory  of  woman's  inferiority  to  man.  The  church 
has  ever  invoked  the  "old  covenant"  as  authority, 
while  it  also  asserts  this  convenant  was  done  away 
with  at  the  advent  of  the  new  dispensation.  Paul, 
whose  character  as  persecutor  was  not  changed  when 
he  veered  from  Judaism  to  Christianity,  gave  to  the 
church  a  lever  long  enough  to  reach  down  through 
eighteen  centuries  in  opposition  to  woman's  equality 
with  man.  Through  this  lengthy  period,  his  teaching 
has  united  the  christian  world  in  opposition  to  her 
right  of  private  judgment  and  personal  freedom. 

Each  great  division  of  Christianity  alike  proclaims 
525 


5*6  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

the  supreme  sinfulness  of  woman  in  working  for  the  ele- 
vation of  her  sex.  In  this  work  she  has  been  left  out- 
side of  religious  sympathy,  outside  of  political  pro- 
tection, yet  in  the  interest  of  justice  she  claims  the 
right  to  tear  down  the  barriers  of  advancing  civiliza- 
tion and  to  rend  asunder  all  beliefs  that  men  hold 
most  sacred.  Freedom  for  woman  underlies  all  the 
great  questions  of  the  age.  She  must  no  longer  be 
the  scapegoat  of  humanity  upon  whose  devoted  head  the 
sins  of  all  people  are  made  to  rest.  Woman's  increas- 
ing freedom  within  the  last  hundred  years  is  not  due 
to  the  church,  but  to  the  printing-press,  to  education, 
to  free-thought  and  other  forms  of  advancing  civiliza- 
tion. The  fashions  of  the  christian  world  have  chang- 
ed but  not  its  innermost  belief.  The  power  of  the 
pulpit,  built  up  by  a  claim  of  divine  authority,  with 
the  priest  as  an  immediate  representative  of  God, 
has  been  reacting  upon  the  priesthood  itself,  and  now 
while  vainly  struggling  for  light  this  order  finds  itself 
bound  by  chains  of  its  own  creating.  To-day  the 
priesthood  is  hampered  by  creeds  and  dogmas  centur- 
ies old,  yet  so  fully  outside  of  practical  life  that  the 
church  has  become  the  great  materialistic  force  of  the 
century;  its  ideas  of  a  God,  its  teachings  of  a  future 
life  all  falling  within  the  realm  of  the  physical  senses; 
the  incorporeal  and  spiritual  are  lost  in  the  grossest 
forms  of  matter.1  Although  a  body  professing  to  in- 
culcate pure  spiritual  truths,  the  church  teaches  the 
the  grossest  form  of  materialism.  It  asserts  principles 
contradictory  to  natural  laws;  it  presents  chaos  as 
the  normal  condition  of  the  infinite;  it  bids  people 
live  under  faith  outside  of  evidence,  and  in  thus  doing 
is  guilty  of  immeasurable    evils  to  mankind.     A  bark 

i.     As  the  resurrection  of  a  material  body  to  dwell  in  a  spiritual  heaven. 


PAST,    PRESENT,    FUTURE  527 

without  compass,  it  steers  upon  a  sea  of  night  no  star 
illumining  the  darkness;  the  control  and  guidance  by 
humanity  of  the  psychic  part  of  being,  generally 
spoken  of  as /'supernatural,"  although  the  truest  to 
nature,  has  become  nearly  lost  through  the  materali- 
zation  of  spiritual  truth  by  the  church,  the  worst  form 
of  idolatry.  Christianity  was  a  stern  reality  to  the 
men  of  the  early  and  middle  ages,  who  believing 
themselves  to  have  been  created  nearer  to  God  than 
woman  also  believed  themselves  to  have  lost  earthly 
immortality  through  her.  Permeated  with  this  idea, 
it  is  not  strange  that  men  through  many  hundred  years 
taught  that  woman  was  especially  under  control  of 
the  Evil  One.  The  devil  was  an  objective  form  to 
the  clergy  and  people  alike.  Nor  under  such  belief,  is 
it  strange  that  priests  should  warn  their  flocks  from  the 
pulpit  against  the  wiles  of  woman,  thus  degrading  her 
self-respect  and  teaching  men  to  hold  her  in  that  con- 
tempt whose  influence  is  felt  to-day.  The  result  of 
this  teaching  has  been  deplorable  to  humanity;  men 
equally  with  women  having  sunk  under  this  degrada- 
tion of  one-half  of  the  race. 

The  most  stupendous  system  of  organized  robbery 
known  has  been  that  of  the  church  towards  woman, 
a  robbery  that  has  not  only  taken  her  self-respect  but 
all  rights  of  person;  the  fruits  of  her  own  industry; 
her  opportunities  of  education;  the  exercise  of  her  own 
judgment,  her  own  conscience,  her  own  will.  The 
unfortunate  peculiarity  of  the  history  of  man,  accord- 
ing to  Buckle,  is  that  although  its  separate  parts  have 
been  examined  with  considerable  ability,  hardly  any 
one  has  attempted  to  outline  them  into  a  whole  and 
ascertain  the  way  they  are  connected  with  each  other. 
While  this  statement  is  virtually  true    as   regards  the 


528  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

general  history  of  mankind,  it  is  most  particularly  so 
in  reference  to  the  position  of  woman  in  its  bearings 
upon  race  development,  A  thorough  investigation  of 
her  connection  with  our  present  form  of  civilization,  or 
even  with  that  of  the  past,  as  compared  with  each  other, 
or  as  influencing  the  whole,  has  never  yet  been  authori- 
tatively undertaken.  This  failure  has  not  been  so  largely 
due  to  willful  neglect  as  to  incapacity  upon  the  part  of 
man  to  judge  truly  of  this  relation.  Woman  herself  must 
judge  of  woman.  The  most  remote  feminine  personality 
is  not  less  incomprehensible  to  man  than  the  woman 
of  to-day;  he  now  as  little  understands  the  finer  quali- 
ties of  her  soul  or  her  high  intuitive  reasoning  facul- 
ties as  in  the  past.  Reason  is  divided  into  two  parts, 
theoretical  and  practical ;  the  former  appertains  to 
man;  the  latter,  composed  of  those  intuitive  faculties 
which  do  not  need  a  long  process  of  ratiocination  for 
their  work,  inhere  in  woman.  Although  the  course  of 
history  has  given  many  glimpses  of  her  superiority,  and 
the  past  few  decades  have  shown  in  every  land  a  new 
awakening  of  woman  to  a  recognition  of  her  own 
powers,  man  as  man  is  still  as  obtuse  as  of  yore.  He 
is  yet  under  the  darkness  of  the  Patriarchate,  failing 
to  recognize  woman  as  a  component  part  of  humanity, 
whose  power  of  development  and  influence  upon  civil- 
ization are  at  least  the  equal  of  his  own.  He  yet 
fails  to  see  in  her  a  factor  of  life  whose  influence  for 
good  or  for  evil  has  ever  been  in  direct  ratio  with  her 
freedom.  He  does  not  yet  discern  her  equal  right  with 
himself  to  impress  her  own  opinions  upon  the  world. 
He  still  interprets  governments  and  religions  as  requir- 
ing from  her  an  unquestioning  obedience  to  laws  she 
has  no  share  in  making,  and  that  place  her  as  an  in- 
ferior in  every  relation  of  life.    Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 


PAST,    PRESENT,    FUTURE  529 

with  keen  insight  into  the  fallibility  of  law-makers, 
declared  that  "good  men  must  not  obey  the  laws  too 
well."  Woman  is  showing  her  innate  wisdom  in  dar- 
ing to  question  the  infallibility  of  man,  his  laws,  and 
his  interpretation  of  her  place  in  creation.  She  is 
not  obeying  "too  well,"  and  yet  man  fails  to  analyze 
her  motives  in  this  defection.  The  church  and  the 
state  have  long  done  man's  thinking  for  him,  the 
ideas  of  the  few,  whose  aim  is  power,  have  been  im- 
pressed upon  the  many ;  individualism  is  still  character- 
ized as  the  essence  of  evil;  self-thought,  self-control 
as  heretical.  The  state  condemns  both  as  a  crime 
against  itself,  the  church  as  a  sin  against  heaven. 
Both  church  and  state  claiming  to  be  of  divine  origin 
have  assumed  divine  right  to  the  control  of  man,  also 
asserting  the  divine  right  of  man  over  woman;  while 
church  and  state  have  thought  for  man,  man  has 
assumed  the  right  to  think  for  woman.2 

As  man  under  fear  of  eternal  damnation  surrendered 
to  the  irresponsible  power  of  church  and  state,  so 
woman  yielded  to  that  power  which  closed  every  ex- 
ternal avenue  of  knowlege  to  her  under  pretext  of  her 
sinfulness.  One-tenth  of  the  human  race,  within  the 
period  covered  by  modern  civilization,  has  compelled 
the  other  nine-tenths  to  think  their  thoughts  and 
live  lives  according  to  their  commands.  This  has 
been  the  chief  effort  of  governments  and  religion. 
The  most  formidable  general  evil  under  which  wo- 
man has  suffered  during    the  Christian    ages    has  been 

a.  When  a  quarter  of  the  human  race  assume  to  tell  me  what  I  must  do,  I  may 
be  too  much  disheartened  by  the  circumstance  to  see  clearly  the  absurdity  of  this 
command.  This  is  the  condition  of  women,  for  whom  I  have  the  same  compas. 
sion  that  I  would  have  for  a  prisoner  so  long  cramped  in  a  narrow  cage  that  he 
could  not  use  his  limbs.  While  many  women  are  thinking  their  own  thoughts 
there  are  others  without  so  potent  a  brain,  who  have  as  yet,  failed  to  see  the  ab- 
surdity of  allowing  others  to  think  for  them.  For  this  condition  of  mental  and 
moral  blunders  the  church  is  responsible.— Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 


530  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND   STATE 

that  of  protection;  a  non-recognition  of  her  ability  to 
care  for  herself,  rendering  watchful  guardianship  over 
her  a  recognized  part  of  man's  law;  not  alone  to  pre- 
vent her  sinking  into  depths  of  vice  but  to  also  pre- 
vent her  entire  subversion  of  government  and  religion. 
Buckle  and  other  writers  have  recognized  the  protective 
spirit  as  the  greatest  enemy  to  civilization,  its  influ- 
ence causing  the  few  to  establish  themselves  as  guard, 
ians  of  the  many  in  all  affairs  of  life.  The  American 
Revolution  in  proclaiming  the  rights  of  humanity 
struck  a  blow  at  the  protective  system.  This  system 
has  ever  based  itself  upon  a  declaration  of  the  supreme 
rights  of  a  God,  and  certain  rights  as  pertaining  to 
certain  classes  of  men  by  virtue  of  authority  from 
that  God.  The  defense  of  such  authority  has  ever 
been  the  chief  business  of  church  and  state,  and  thus 
religions  and  governments  have  neither  found  time  nor 
inclination  to  uphold  the  rights  of  humanity.  Under 
the  christian  system,  woman  as  the  most  rebellious 
against  God  in  having  eaten  a  forbidden  fruit,  has 
found  herself  condemned  through  the  centuries  to  un- 
told oppression  in  order  that  the  rights  of  God  might 
be  maintained.  Yet  while  constantly  teaching  that 
woman  brought  sin  into  the  world,  the  church  ever 
forgets  its  own  corollary;  that  if  she  brought  sin  she 
also  brought  a  God  into  the  world,  thus  throwing  in- 
effable splendor  over  mankind.  The  whole  theory  re- 
garding woman,  under  Christianity,  has  been  based  up- 
on the  conception  that  she  had  no  right  to  live  for 
herself  alone.  Her  duty  to  others  has  continuously 
been  placed  before  her  and  her  training  has  ever  been 
that  of  self-sacrifice.  Taught  from  the  pulpit  and 
legislative  halls  that  she  was  created  for  another,  that 
her  position    must    always  be    secondary  even    to   her 


PAST,    PRESENT,    FUTURE  53 1 

children,  her  right  to  life,  has  been  admitted  only 
in  so  far  as  its  reacting  effect  upon  another  could  be 
predicated.  That  she  was  first  created  for  herself,  as  an 
independent  being  to  whom  all  the  opportunities  of 
the  world  should  be  open  because  of  herself,  has  not 
entered  the  thought  of  the  church;  has  not  yet  become 
one  of  the  conceptions  of  law;  is  not  yet  the  founda- 
tion of  the  family. 

But  woman  is  learning  for  herself  that  not  self-sac- 
rifice, but  self-development,  is  her  first  duty  in  life; 
and  this,  not  primarily  for  the  sake  of  others  but  that 
she  may  become  fully  herself;  a  perfectly  rounded 
being  from  every  point  of  view;  her  duty  to  others 
being  a  secondary  consideration  arising  from  those  re- 
lations in  life  where  she  finds  herself  placed  at  birth, 
or  those  which  later  she  voluntarily  assumes.  But  these 
duties  are  not  different  in  point  of  obligation,  no  more 
imperative  upon  her,  than  are  similar  duties  upon 
man.  The  political  doctrine  of  the  sovereignty  of 
the  individual,  although  but  partially  recognized  even 
in  the  United  States,  has  been  most  efficacious  in  de- 
stroying that  protective  spirit  which  has  so  greatly  in- 
terfered with  the  progress  of  humanity.  This  spirit 
yet  retains  its  greatest  influence  in  the  family,  where 
it  places  a  boundary  between  husband  and  wife.  Of 
all  circumstances  biasing  the  judgment  and  restricting 
the  sympathies,  none  have  shown  themselves  more 
powerful  than  physical  differences,  whether  of  race, 
color  or  sex.  When  those  differences  are  not  alone 
believed  to  be  a  mark  of  inferiority,  but  to  have  been 
especially  created  for  the  pleasure  and  peculiar  ser- 
vice of  another,  the  elements  of  irresponsible  tyranny 
upon  one  side,  and  irremediable  slavery  upon  the 
other,  are  already  organized.  If  in  addition,  that  infer- 


532  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

ior  is  regarded  as  under  an  especial  curse  for  extra- 
ordinary sin,  as  the  church  has  ever  inculcated  in 
reference  to  women;  and  when  as  in  the  case  of  woman 
and  man  an  entire  separation  of  interests,  hopes,  feel- 
ings and  passions  is  impossible,  we  have  reached  the 
extreme  of  injustice  and  misery  under  the  protective 
system.  Consequently  no  other  form  of  "protection" 
has  possessed  so  many  elements  of  absolute  injustice 
as  that  of  man  over  woman.  Swedenborg  taught,  and 
experience  declares,  that  morality  cannot  exist  except 
under  conditions  of  freedom.  Hence  we  find  much 
that  has  been  called  morality  is  the  effect  of  depend- 
ence and  lessened  self-respect,  and  has  really  been 
immorality  and  degradation.  While  in  every  age,  the 
virtues  of  self-sacrifice  have  been  pointed  to  as 
evidence  of  the  highest  morality,  we  find  those 
women  in  whom  it  has  been  most  apparent,  have 
been  those  doing  least  justice  where  justice  first  be- 
longs— to  themselves.  Justice  as  the  foundation  of  the 
highest  law,  is  a  primal  requirement  of  the  individual 
to  the  self.  It  is  none  the  less  a  serious  impeachment 
of  the  religious-moral  idea,  that  the  doctrine  of  protec- 
tion and  the  duty  of  woman's  self-sacrifice,  were  taught 
under  the  theory  of  divine  authority.  No  faith  was 
more  profound,  none  could  be  more  logical  if  resting 
on  a  true  foundation,  than  the  church  theory  regarding 
woman.  Life  assumed  a  sterner  reality  to  men  who 
believed  themselves  in  point  of  purity  and  priority 
nearer  their  Creator  than  woman.  Thereafter,  she  was 
to  be  protected  from  herself,  the  church  and  man  cheer- 
fully assuming  this  duty.  Under  the  protective  spirit 
it  is  not  so  very  long  since  men  sold  themselves  and 
their  families  to  some  other  man  in  power,  either  lay 
or  religious,  under  promise  of  protection,  binding  them- 


PAST,   PRESENT,   FUTURE  533 

selves  to  obey  the  mandates  of  such  lord  evermore. 
The  church  protected  and  directed  the  thought  of  the 
world.  To  think  for  one's  self  is  not  even  now  the 
tendency  of  mankind;  the  few  who  dare,  do  so  at  great 
peril.  It  will  require  another  hundred  years  of  per- 
sonal and  political  freedom  for  men  to  appreciate  what 
liberty  really  is — for  them  to  possess  confidence  in 
their  own  judgment  upon  religious  questions — for  the 
man  of  humble  station  to  fully  believe  in  himself  and 
in  his  own  opinions  when  opposed  to  the  authority  of 
church  or  state. 

Women  of  the  present  century  whose  strugggle  for 
equal  opportunity  of  education  with  men;  for  a  chance 
to  enter  the  liberal  professions;  for  a  fair  share  of  the 
world  of  work;  for  equal  pay  in  that  work;  for  all 
demands  of  equality  which  make  the  present  a  noted 
age  in  the  world's  history,  have  met  their  greatest 
opposition  from  this  protective  spirit.  No  less  than 
during  the  darkest  period  of  its  history  does  the  church 
still  maintain  the  theory  that  education8  and  public 
life  are  not  fitting  for  woman— indelicate  for  herself 
and  injurious  to  the  community.  During  the  Chris- 
tian ages,  the  church  has  not  alone  shown  cruelty  and 
contempt  for  woman,  but  has  exhibited  an  impious  and 
insolent  disregard  of  her  most  common  rights  of  hu- 
manity. It  has  robbed  her  of  responsibility,  putting 
man  in  place  of  God.  It  has  forbidden  her  the  offices  of 
the  church  and  at  times  an  entrance  within  its  doors. 
It  has  denied  her  independent  thought,  declaring  her 
a  secondary  creation  for  man's  use  to  whom  alone  it  has 

3.  When  reading  was  first  taught  women  in  America,  said  Dr.ClemenceS.Lozier 
it  was  opposed  on  the  ground  that  she  would  forge  her  father's  or  husband's  name 
should  she  learn  to  read  and  write.  Geography  met  with  like  opposition  on  the 
ground  of  its  tendency  to  make  her  dissatisfied  with  home  and  desirous  to  travel, 
while  the  records  of  history  show  that  the  first  public  examination  of  women  in 
Geometry,  1809,  raised  a  cry  of  disapproval  over  the  whole  country. 


534  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

made  her  responsible.  It  has  anathematized  her  sex, 
teaching  her  to  feel  shame  for  the  very  fact  of  her 
being.  It  has  not  been  content  with  proclaiming  a 
curse  upon  her  creative  attributes,  but  has  thrust  the 
sorrows  and  expiations  of  man's  "curse"  upon  her, 
and  in  doing  these  things  the  church  has  wrought 
her  own  ruin.  A  religious  revolution  of  the  most  rad- 
ical kind,  has  even  now  assumed  such  proportions  as 
to  nearly  destroy  the  basic  creeds  of  various  sects, 
and  undermine  the  whole  fabric  of  Christendom.  It 
everywhere  exists,  although  neither  the  world  nor  the 
church  seem  to  realize  the  magnitude  of  its  propor- 
tions. As  a  legitimate  result  of  two  opposing  forces, 
a  crisis  in  the  life  of  the  church  is  at  hand;  nay,  even 
upon  it.  While  we  see  it  making  organized  effort  for 
extension  of  power  and  entire  control  of  the  state,  we 
also  find  great  increase  of  radical  thought,  and  devel- 
opment of  individual  conscience  and  individual  judg- 
ment With  thought  no  longer  bound  by  fear  of  ever- 
lasting punishment,  mankind  will  cease  to  believe  un- 
proved assertions,  simply  because  made  by  a  class  of 
men  under  assumed  authority  from  God.  Reason  will 
be  used,  mankind  will  seek  for  truth  come  whence  it 
may,  lead  where  it  will,  and  with  our  own  Lucretia 
Mott,  will  accept  "truth  for  authority  and  not  author- 
ity for  truth." 

In  knocking  at  the  door  of  political  rights,  woman 
is  severing  the  last  link  between  church  and  state; 
the  church  must  lose  that  power  it  has  wielded  with 
changing  force  since  the  days  of  Constantine,  ever  to 
the  injury  of  freedom  and  the  world.  The  immeasur- 
able injustice  to  woman,  and  her  sufferings  under 
Christianity,  her  intellectual,  moral  and  spiritual  ser- 
vitude, will  never  be  understood  until  life  with  itssor- 


PAST,    PRESENT,    FUTURE  535 

rows  shall  be  opened  to  our  vision    in  a  sphere    more 
refined  than  the  present  one.    The  superstitions  of  the 
church,  the  miseries    of    woman,  her    woes,    tortures, 
burnings,  rackings  and  all   the  brutalities  she  has  en- 
dured in  the  church,  the   state,  the  family,  under    the 
sanction  of  Christianity,  would  be   incredible    had  we 
not  the  most  undeniable   evidence  of  their    existence, 
not  alone  in  the  past  but  as  shown   by  the  teachings, 
laws    and    customs  of    the    present  time.4     "She  has 
suffered    under  a  theology  which    extended  its    rule 
not    only    to    her    civil    and   political  relations,    but 
to    her   most    insignificant    domestic      and      personal 
concerns,    regulating   the    commerce    of   husband  and 
wife,    of  parent   and    child,   of  master    and    servant, 
even  prescribing  her  diet  and  dress,  her  education  and 
her  industries."    Edmund  Noble  speaks  in  like  manner 
of  the  ancient  Russians  under  the  tyrannical  provisions 
of  the  Greek  church,  saying,  "Clearly,    such  a  system 
of  theocratic  supervision  and  direction  as  this,  is  com- 
patible only  with  the  lowest   possible  spiritual   condi- 
tion of  the  subject,  or  the  lowest  possible  conception 
of  God."     Possessing  no   proof    of  its    premises,    the 
church  has  ever  fostered  unintelligent  belief.  To  doubt 
her  "unverified"  assertion  has  ever  been   declared   an 
unpardonable  sin.     The  supreme  effort  of   the  church, 
being  maintenance  of  power,  it   is   but  recently  that 
woman  has  been  allowed   to   read  history  for  herself, 
or  having  read  it,  dared  to  draw   her  own  conclusions 
from  its  premises.     Ignorance   and  falsehood   created 

4.  There  are  hard  and  ugly  facts  in  this  Christendom  of  ours,  and  its  history  in- 
cludes the  serfdom  and  nihilism  of  Russia,  the  drudgery  of  German  women;  the 
wrongs  of  the  Irish  peasant  girl;  the  20,000  little  English  girls  sold  each  year  to 
gratify  the  lusts  of  the  aristocracy;  all  the  horrors  of  the  Inquisition;  all  the  burn- 
ings of  the  witches;  the  slavery  and  polygamy  of  America  and  the  thousand  in- 
iquities  all  around  us;  all  these  belong  to  the  history  of  Christendom.— The 
Woman's  Tribune,  Clara  Colby,  editor, 


536  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

a  sentiment  in  accord  with  themselves,  crushing  all 
her  aspirations.  In  the  family,  man  still  decides  the 
rights  and  duties  of  the  wife,  as  of  old.  As  legislator 
and  judge,  he  still  makes  and  executes  class  laws.  In 
the  church,  he  yet  arrogates  to  himself  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  bible;  still  claims  to  be  an  exponent  of 
the  Divine  will,  that  grandest  lesson  of  the  reforma- 
tion, the  right  of  private  interpretation  of  the  scrip- 
tures, not  yet  having  been  conceded  to  woman.  The 
premises  upon  which  the  church  is  based  being  radic- 
ally false,  it  is  a  necessary  corollary  that  its  conclu- 
sions must  be  equally  false,  and  this,  most  especially 
in  everything  relating  to  woman.  Trained  from  infan- 
cy by  the  church  to  a  belief  in  woman's  inferiority, 
and  incapacity  for  self-government,  men  of  the  highest 
station  have  not  hesitated  to  organize  societies  in  op- 
position to  her  just  demands.  As  early  as  1875,  an 
anti-woman's  franchise  association  was  formed  in 
London,  under  name  of  "Association  for  Protecting 
the  Franchise  from  the  Encroachment  of  Women;" 
Hon.  Mr.  Bouverie,  a  leading  opponent  of  Woman 
Suffrage  in  the  House  of  Commons,  being  its  chair- 
man. Among  the  promoters  of  the  movement  were 
Sir  Henry  James,  formerly  attorney-general  (for  the 
Crown"),  Hon.  Mr.  Childers,  late  First  Lord  of  the 
Admiralty,  Mr.  Claflin  and  Mr.  Leathers,  correspond- 
ent of  the  New  York  Tribune. 

Since  this  period,  a  number  of  women  distinguished 
as  "the  wives  of"  have  petitioned  legislative  bodies 
for  protection  against  freedom  for  themselves,  and  all 
others  of  their  sex,  in  asking  that  legislatures  shall 
not  recognize  woman's  self-governing  right.  The  deep- 
est depth  of  degradation  is  reached  when  the  slave 
not  only  declares  against  his  own  freedom,  but  strives 


PAST,   PRESENT,    FUTURE  537 

to  tighten  the  bonds  of  fellow  slaves;  and  the  most 
cruel  wrong  resulting  from  such  slavery  is  the  de- 
struction of  self-respect  in  the  enslaved,  as  shown  by 
the  course  of  these  women  petitioners.  The  protec- 
tive theory  reached  its  lowest  depth  for  woman  by  an 
attack  upon  her  already  vested  rights  of  the  ballot,  in 
the  former  territory,  now  State  of  Washington,  on  the 
Pacific  coast,  in  case  of  Nevada  M.  Bloomer  [a  woman] 
against  John  Wood  and  others,  to  have  the  women 
of  that  territory  deprived  of  their  already  existing 
right  of  suffrage.6  In  line  with  the  general  oppo- 
sition to  the  enfranchisement  of  woman,  men  of  even 
the  most  liberal  tendencies  declare  that  her  political 
freedom  will  be  used  to  sustain  the  church,  apparently 
forgetting  that  man  alone  has  placed  the  church  in 
power  and  that  man  alone  holds  it  in  power.  And 
proof  of  man's  complicity  is  even  greater  than  this. 
Despite  what  is  said  of  the  larger  church  membership 
of  women,  the  most  noted  modern  evangelist,  Moody, 
recently  declared  that  he  "found  men  ten-fold,  aye,  an 
hundred-fold"  more  receptive  of  his  preaching  than 
women.  While  speaking  in  Farwell  Hall,  Chicago, 
1886,  he  said,  "For  fifteen  years  I  have  preached  to 
women  in  the  afternoon  and  very  often  as  near  as  I 
could,  have  preached  the  same  sermon  to  men  at  night, 
and  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  have  had 
five  times  more  result  in  preaching  to  men  than  to 
women."     This  pseudo-argument,    as   to  woman's  sus- 

5.  This  case  decided  adversely  to  woman's  right  of  suffrage  by  the  territorial 
Supreme  Court,  was  appealed  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  through 
the  efforts  of  Mr.  A.  S.  Austin,  a  young  and  energetic  attorney  of  Olympia,  the 
state  capital;  the  points  raised  by  Mr.  Austiu  were,  First:  that  the  Bloomer  case 
is  a  collusive  one  between  the  original  plaintiff  and  defendants,  and  is  a  fraud 
upon  all  friends  of  equal  suffrage  in  the  state.  Second;  that  the  decision  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Washington  Territory  was  erroneous  in  two  respects,  to-wit; 
that  the  statute  of  the  territory  conferring  suffrage  was  constitutional,  and  that 
women  are  citizens. 


$38  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND  STATE 

ceptibility  to  church  teaching,  brought  up  by  the  en- 
emies of  her  freedom,  possesses  no  more  real  value 
than  the  pseudo-political  argument  sometimes  pre- 
sented in  opposition  to  woman's  admission  into  active 
politics;  that  is,  her  emotional  temperament.  To  one 
who  has  been  present  at  four  great  presidential  nom- 
inating conventions  and  several  large  state  conven- 
tions, knowledge  upon  this  point  is  practical.  When 
one  has  seen  a  cordon  of  police  enforced  by  the  mayor 
upon  the  platform,  protecting  the  officers  of  such 
convention,  while  its  members,  standing  upon  seats, 
stamped,  shouted,  gesticulated,  threatened  with  revol- 
vers, acting  more  like  uncaged  wild  beasts  than  like  men8 
when  one  has  witnessed  the  wildest  enthusiasm  at  the 
mention  of  a  name,  the  waving  of  flags,  of  hats,  of 
handkerchiefs,  the  shaking  of  umbrellas,  chairs,  canes, 
with  violent  stamping,  amid  a  hubbub  of  indistinguish- 
able voices,  all  shouting;  screaming  so  loud  that  people 
for  blocks  away  are  roused  from  slumber7  in  affright 
of  a  fire,  or  the  approach  of  an  ungovernable  mob, 
such  objections  to  woman's  freedom  as  her  "emotions" 
fall  to  their  lowest  value 

In  Church  and  in  State,  man  has  exhibited  the  wild- 
est passions,  the  most  ungovernable  frenzy — has  shown 
himself  less  controlled  by  reason  than  possible  for  wo- 
man under  the  most  adverse  circumstances.  Judaism, 
and  its  offspring,  Christianity,  show  the  results  of  the 
Patriarchate  in  some  of  its  most  degenerate  forms; 
industrial  servitude,  educational  restrictions,  legal 
thraldom,  political  slavery,  false  religious  teachings, 
are  but  a  portion  of  the  evils  existing  under  its  most 
enlightened    forms,  and    equally  with    the    more    pro- 

6.  At  a  Democratic  State  Convention,  Syracuse,  N.  V. 

7.  This  was  the  case  at  the  Republican  nominating  convention,  Chicago,  1880. 


PAST,    PRESENT,    FUTURE  539 

nounced  polygamy  and  infanticide  they  show  a  total 
perversion  of  moral  ideas.  Woman  dearly  pays  for  the 
rights  she  has  secured.  Labor  opposes,  in  less  pay  for 
the  same  work;  literature,  at  first  welcoming  her  only 
through  the  cook  book,  next  compelled  her  to  conceal 
her  sex  under  a  male  pseudonym,  in  order  that  her 
writings  might  be  received  with  the  same  respect  as 
those  of  man;  art  has  given  her  similar  experiences,  and 
while  to-day  admitting  her  to  the  same  advantage  of 
study  with  man,  yet  compels  her  to  pay  twice  the  price 
for  the  same  instructions. 

The  careful  student  of  history  will  discover  that 
Christianity  has  been  of  very  little  value  in  advanc- 
ing civilization,  but  has  done  a  great  deal  toward 
retarding  it.8  "Civilization,  a  recognition  of  the 
rights  of  others  at  every  poinS  of  contact,"  has  been 
carried  forward  by  means  of  rebellion  against  church 
teaching  and  church  authority.  The  experience  of 
science  is  familiar  to  all,  even  school  children  quoting 
Galileo  and  Dr.  Faust.  What  are  called  reformations  in 
religion,  the  work  of  Huss,  of  Luther,  of  the  Walden- 
ses,  the  Huguenots,  are  equally  familiar  instances  to 
the  youngest  student,  of  rebellion  against  the  church. 
These  and  a  myriad  of  others  known  to  the  histo- 
rian, have  all  been  brought  about  by  refusal  to  accept 
the  authority  of  the  church  as  final.  The  Peasant 
War,  in  France,  the  struggles  of  Wat  Tyler  and  of 
Hampden  in  England,  the  French  and  the  American 
revolutions  looking  toward  equality  of  rights;  and  a 
thousand  minor  forms  of  political  progress  have  all 
been  opposed  by  the  church  as  rebellions  against  its 
teachings,  yet  all  have  been   marked  steps   in  civiliza- 

8.  The  liberty  and  civilization  of  the  present  are  nothing  else  than  the  frag- 
ments of  rights  which  the  scaffold  and  stake  have  wrung  from  the  strong  hands  of 
the  usurpers.— Wendell  Phillips. 


540  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

tion.  The  church  and  civilization  are  antipodal;  one 
means  authority,  the  other  freedom;  one  means  conser- 
vatism, the  other  progress ;  one  means  the  rights  of 
God  as  interpreted  by  the  priesthood,  the  other  the 
rights  of  humanity  as  interpreted  by  humanity.  Civil- 
ization advances  by  free-thought,  free  speech,  free 
men.  The  uprising  of  the  women  of  all  peoples  in 
assertion  of  their  common  humanity  with  man,  is  ex- 
emplification of  that  fact  recognized  in  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  that  while  patient  endurance  of 
wrongs  to  which  persons  are  accustomed,  always  long 
borne  rather  than  by  change  perhaps  to  meet  evils 
they  know  not  of,  shows  its  absolutely  certain  ultimate 
effect,  no  matter  how  long  delayed,  in  rebellion.  A 
time  comes  in  the  history  of  souls,  as  of  nations,  when 
forbearance  ceases  to  be  a  virtue,  and  self-respecting 
life  is  only  to  be  retained  through  defiance  of  and  re- 
bellion against,  existing  customs.  The  soul  must 
assert  its  own  supremacy  or  die.  It  id  not  one  wo- 
man, or  the  women  of  one  nation  that  have  thus  sud- 
denly shown  desire  to  rule  themselves — to  act  for  them- 
selves alone.  A  strange  identity  of  thought  prevades 
all  parts  of  the  world — India,  China,  Japan,  Russia 
and  all  of  Europe,  North  and  South  America,  the 
vast  continents  of  the  southern  seas  and  the  isles 
thereof,  and  even  barbaric  Africa,  all  evince  proof  of 
the  wide  psychic  under-current  which  seething  through 
women's  souls,  is  overthrowing  the  civilizations  built 
upon  the  force  principles  of  the  patriarchate,  and  will 
soon  reinstate  the  reign  of  truth  and  justice. 
During  those  long  ages  of  priestly  intolerance, 
of  domestic  and  governmental  tyranny,  in  which  wo- 
man seemed  to  accept  the  authority  of  the  priest  as 
that  of  God,  there  still  existed  a  consciousness  hardly 


PAST,   PRESENT,   FUTURE  541 

perceptible  to  herself,  that  she  was  an  independent 
being  to  whom  by  virtue  of  her  humanity  all  oppor- 
tunities in  life  belonged.  From  century  to  century 
mothers  transmitted  this  scarcely  developed  percep- 
tion to  daughters,  until  suddenly  within  the  past  fifty 
years,  these  dominant  ideas  woke  to  thought,  and  the 
women  of  all  nations  began  to  proclaim  their  same 
right  to  self-control  as  that  claimed  by  man. 

It  is  impossible  to  write  of  the  church  without  no- 
ticing its  connection  with  the  great  systems  of  the 
world,  during  its  course  of  life.  The  history  of  Chris- 
tendom is  the  history  of  the  myriad  institutions  which 
have  arisen  through  its  teachings,  or  that  have  been 
sustained  by  its  approval.  The  world  has  not  grown 
wise  under  it,  except  with  a  wisdom  that  is  leading  the 
purest  humanitarian  thought  in  a  direction  contrary  to 
its  footsteps.  Slavery  and  prostitution,  persecutions 
for  heresy,  the  inquisition  with  its  six  hundred  modes 
of  torture,  the  destruction  of  learning,  the  oppression 
of  science,  the  systematized  betrayal  of  confiding  in- 
nocence, the  recognized  and  unrecognized  polygamy 
of  man,  the  denial  to  woman  of  a  right  to  herself,  her 
thought,  her  wages,  her  children,  to  a  share  in  the 
government  which  rules  her;  to  an  equal  part  in  re- 
ligious institutions,  all  these  and  a  myriad  more,  are 
parts  of  what  is  known  as  christian  civilization.  Nor 
has  the  church  ever  been  the  leader  in  great  reforms. 
During  the  anti-slavery  conflict,  the  American  Church 
was  known  as  "the  bulwark  of  American  slavery." 
Its  course  continues  the  same  in  every  great  contest 
with  wrong.  A  memorial  history  of  the  American 
Episcopal  church,  an  extensive  work  in  two  volumes 
of  seven  hundred  pages  each,  published  within  the  past 
few  years,  devotes  but  seven  pages  to  "the  Attitude  of 


542  WOMAN,    CHURCH   AND    STATE 

the  Church  during  the  Civil  War,"  and  the  general 
refusal  of  the  church  to  take  part  in  the  great  struggle 
for  national  life,  is  referred  to  with  complacent  satisfac- 
tion. Penitentiaries  and  prisons,  asylums  and  refor- 
matories, all  institutions  of  a  repressive  character 
which  the  church  prides  herself  as  having  built  up, 
are  no  less  evil  than  the  convents,  monasteries  and 
religious  orders  belonging  to  it.  They  have  all  risen 
through  perversion  of  nature.  Crimes  and  criminals 
are  built  up  and  born  because  of  the  great  wrong  first 
done  to  mothers;  they  are  the  offspring  of  church  and 
state.  Science  now  declares  crime  to  be  a  disease, 
but  it  has  not  yet  discovered  the  primal  cause  of  this 
disease.  It  is  an  inheritance  from  centuries  of  legalized 
crime  against  woman,  of  which  the  church  in  its 
teachings  is  prime  factor. 

Woman  will  gain  nothing  by  a  compromising  atti- 
tude toward  the  church,  by  attempt  to  excuse  its 
great  wrong  toward  her  sex,  or  by  palliation  of  its 
motives.  On  the  contrary,  a  stern  reference  to  facts, 
keeping  the  face  of  the  world  turned  toward  its  past 
teachings,  its  present  attitude,  is  her  duty.  Wrongs 
of  omission  equal  in  magnitude  those   of  commission. 

Advance  for  woman  is  too  well  established,  woman 
has  had  too  much  experience,  has  borne  too  much  rid- 
icule, misrepresentation  and  abuse  to  now  hesitate  in 
an  attack  upon  the  stronghold  of  her  oppression — the 
church.  She  possesses  too  full  knowledge  of  its  subtle 
touch  upon  civil  law  to  dare  leave  it  alone;  it  has  be- 
come one  of  woman's  first  duties,  one  of  her  greatest 
responsibilities,  to  call  public  attention  to  its  false 
doctrines  and  false  teachings  in  regard  to  the  origin, 
condition  and  subjection  of  woman.  She  has  engaged 
in  too  many    battles,  weathered    too    many    storms  to 


PAST,   PRESENT,   FUTURE  543 

longer  hesitate  in  exposure  of  its  stupendous  crimes 
toward  one-half  of  humanity.  Let  those  who  fear, 
hide  themselves,  if  they  will,  until  the  storm  is  past. 
Let  those  who  dare,  defiantly  rejoice  that  they  are 
called  upon  to  bear  still  more,  in  order  that  woman 
may  be  free.  A  brighter  day  is  to  come  for  the  world, 
a  day  when  the  intuitions  of  woman's  soul  shall  be  ac- 
cepted as  part  of  humanity's  spiritual  wealth;  when 
force  shall  step  backward,  and  love,  in  reality,  rule  the 
teachings  of  religion;  and  may  woman  be  strong  in 
the  ability  and  courage  necessary  to  bring  about  this 
millennial  time.  The  world  is  full  of  signs  of  the 
near  approach  of  this  period;  as  never  before  is  there 
an  arousing  sense  of  something  deeper,  holier  in  re- 
ligion than  the  christian  church  has  given.  The 
world  has  seemingly  awaited  the  advent  of  heroic  souls 
who  once  again  should  dare  all  things  for  the  truth. 
The  woman  who  possesses  love  for  her  sex,  for  the 
world,  for  truth,  justice  and  right,  will  not  hesitate 
to  place  herself  upon  record  as  opposed  to  falsehood, 
no  matter  under  what  guise  of  age  or  holiness  it  ap- 
pears. A  generation  has  passed  since  the  great  strug- 
gle began,  but  not  until  within  ten  years  has  woman 
dared  attack  upon  the  veriest  stronghold  of  her  op- 
pression, the  Church.  The  state,  agent  and  slave  of 
the  church,  has  so  long  united  with  it  in  suppression 
of  woman's  intelligence,  has  so  long  preached  of  power 
to  man  alone,  that  it  has  created  an  inherited  tendency, 
an  inborn  line  of  thought  toward  repression.  Bent 
in  this  line  before  his  birth,  man  still  unwittingly 
thinks  of  woman  as  not  quite  his  equal,  and  it  requires 
a  new  creation  of  mind  to  change  his  thought.  A 
second  generation  has  arisen,  in  whom  some  slight 
inherited  tendencies  toward  recognition  of  a  woman's 


544  WOMAN,    CHURCH    AND    STATE 

right  to  herself  are  seen.  In  the  next  generation  this 
line  of  inherited  thought  will  have  become  stronger, 
both  Church  and  State  more  fully  recognizing  woman's 
inherent  right  to  share  in  all  the  opportunities  of  life; 
but  at  what  cost  to  all  who  have  taken  part  in  the 
great    struggle. 

Has  woman  no  wrongs  to  avenge  upon  the 
church?  As  I  look  backward  through  history  I  see 
the  church  everywhere  stepping  upon  advancing 
civilization,  hurling  woman  from  the  plane  of  "natural 
rights"  where  the  fact  of  her  humanity  had  placed  her, 
and  through  itself,  and  its  control  over  the  state,  in 
the  doctrine  of  "revealed  rights"  everywhere  teaching 
an  inferiority  of  sex;  a  created  subordination  of  woman 
to  man;  making  her  very  existence  a  sin;  holding  her 
accountable  to  a  diverse  code  of  morals  from  man;  de- 
claring her  possessed  of  fewer  rights  in  church  and 
in  state;  her  very  entrance  into  heaven  made  depend- 
ent upon  some  man  to  come  as  mediator  between  her 
and  the  Saviour  it  has  preached,  thus  crushing  her  per- 
sonal, intellectual  and  spiritual  freedom.  Looking  for- 
ward, I  see  evidence  of  a  conflict  more  severe  than  any 
yet  fought  by  reformation  or  science;  a  conflict  that 
will  shake  the  foundations  of  religious  belief,  tear  into 
fragments  and  scatter  to  the  winds  the  old  dogmas 
upon  which  all  forms  of  Christianity  are  based.  It 
will  not  be  the  conflict  of  man  with  man  upon  rites 
and  systems;  it  will  not  be  the  conflict  of  science  upon 
church  theories  regarding  creation  and  eternity;  it 
will  not  be  the  light  of  biology  illuminating  the  hy- 
pothesis of  the  resurrection  of  the  body;  but  it  will 
be  the  rebellion  of  one  half  of  the  church  against 
those  theological  dogmas  upon  which  the  very  exist- 
ence   of  the   church    is    based.     In  no    other    country 


PAST,    PRESENT,    FUTURE  545 

has  the  conflict  between  natural  and  revealed  rights 
been  as  pronounced  as  in  the  United  States;  and  in 
this  country  where  the  conflict  first  began,  we  shall 
see  its  full  and  final  development.  During  the  agss, 
no  rebellion  has  been  of  like  importance  with  that  of 
Woman  against  the  tyranny  of  Church  and  State; 
none  has  had  its  far  reaching  effects.  We  note  its  be- 
ginning; its  progress  will  overthrow  every  existing 
form  of  these  institutions;  its  end  will  be  a  regener- 
ated world. 


THE   END 


INDEX. 


Abduction  of  girls,  195 
Abbey  of  Fontevrault,  67 
Abbesse  L'de  Jouarre,  107 
Accursed  Sciences,  The  235,  252n 
Act  of  Parliament  synonomous  with 

Law  of  God,  129 
Adam,  49,  51,  52,  54,  402,  432,  522 
Agamani  Shadee,  26,  27 
Agar  Ellis  Case,  319,321,  463 
Age  of  Protection,  183, 184, 191, 209,210 
'All  The."  23 
Albany     Law     Journal's      "Curious 

Question"  320 
Alruna  or  "Holy  Women,"  42 
AmeVNofri-Ari,      goddess    wife    of 

Amun,  33,  34 
American    Colonies,     laws     against 

women,  282,  28^,  286,  287,  337,  338 
American  Sabbath  Union,  515 
Amme  The,  376n 
Anaesthetics  discovered  by  Women 

Doctors,  241,  242,  433.  244 
Angelique  Arnault, Mother.  68 
"An   Unhallowed  Thing"~a  wife,  71, 

87 
Arabs,    Arabic,  Arabian,  13,  14,  34,  65 
Ark,  Archa,  Argo,  32,  40 
Aryans,  the  Ancient  23,  24,  365 
Assembly  of  Diana,  217 
Astec  language,  its  Champollion,  12 
Ashmolean  Library  of  Oxford.  33 
Athens,  41,  296,  334 
Attack  upon  Science  by  the  Church, 

243 
Athrytes,  a  princess-prophetess,  34 
Atrium  Vertae,  discoveries  in  the,  39 
Atlantis,  296 
Auto  da  fe\  228,  311,  371 
Babel,  its  meaning,  46 
Bac,  Boc,  Bacchus,  Bacchus-Sabiesa, 

123,  239,  258. 
Banditti  of  the  Middle  Ages,  300 
Baptism  of  Nude  Women,  215 
Baron  of  Tauioz,  The,  168 
Berner's  Mr.  Bill,  378 
Bhagavad  Gita,  28 
Birchall  Case,  The,  314 
"Birds    of    the    Night,"    "Birds  of 

Prey,"  257 
Black  Mass,  The,  176,  257 
Blessing  the  Nuptial  Bed,  158 
Blockulu  of  Sweden,  2550 


"Bloody  Town,  The"  285,  287 
Blood   hounds  for  hunting   women! 

205 
Boehine,  Jacob,  50 
Borough-English,  153 
Boys,  destruction  of.  196 
Brank,  The  334 
"Breasted  God,  The"  45 
Breton    Ballad    of  Fourteenth  Cen- 
tury, 168 
Bull    Against    Priestly  Lechery,  95, 

96 
"Burning  Place  of   the  Cross,  The," 

228 
Buying  wives,  302,  304 
Caeser,  deification  of  177,  178 
Canadian  Review,  non 
Canadian  Colonies,  vice  in,  197 
Canon  Law,  its  injury     to     woman, 

37,  83,  114,  n6n,  117,   121,   124,   125, 

127,  128,  132,  134,  138,  139,  145,  478 
Canons  of  Cathedral  of  Lyons,  155 
Cannon  George  Q,  514 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  Colony  of,  181 
Cardinal  Antonelli,  105,  136,  137 
C£tayana,  compilation  of  laws,  25 
Cats  Black  burned  with  witches,  218, 

219 
Cats,  mesentery  of,  236 
Catherine  de  Medicis,  57 
Catherine,  wife  of  Peter  the  Great, 

baptized  nude,  215 
Catholic  Review,  The  428, 
Celibacy,  its  notable  consequences, 

72,  81 
Chaldea,  Ancient,  12,  234 
Chang  Lai  Sin,  on  Chinese  women, 

40 
Charlemagne,  his    influence  on  the 

Church,  116;  his  Polygamy,  398. 
Chastity  Belt,  The  356 
Chastity  of  Concubinage,  unchastity 

of  marriage  taught,  72,  79,    80,  8i, 

86,  91.  93,  94.   97.   99.    101,    102,    103, 

106, 107.  no 
Chief  High  Priest,  Egyptian,  32 
Christine  of  Pisa,  jiy,  212 
Christian  Party  in  Politics,  The,  427 
Christianity    teaches    the  existence 

of  a  superior  and  an  inferior  sex, 466 
Christianized     Indians,      laws     for 

women  of,  519 


547 


548 


INDEX 


Christianity  of  little  value   to  civili- 
B,  530 

Christendom    dragged  to  darkness, 
150 

tian  Register,  The  (Boston)  491 
Christian  Union,  The  3x0.  502,508, 
Child  took  precedence  of  Father,  13 
Chinese  girls  slaves    to  Europeans, 

Chili,  Chilian  women  penitents,    107, 

108,  109 
Child  criminals    rapidly  increasing, 

211 
Chiniquy,  Rev.  Charles,  8sn,  98-101    - 
Chivalry  injurioti  117 

Church,  the  1 
Church,  The,   and  civilization  antip 

odal,  540 
Churchman,  The  459. 
Churching  of  women,  42,  60,487 
Chrysies,  Priestess  of  Juno;  import- 
ance of  the  office,  40. 
Circe,  a  renowned  physician,  245 
City  of  God,  2ign,  26m,  464 
Civilization  not  dependent   upon  the 

Pulpit  or  the  Press,  431 
Cleveland,     Grover,    as    President, 

sends  a  gift  to  Pope  Leo  XIII. 
Code  of  Canon  Law,  116 
Code  of  England,  345 
Code  Penal  of  Italy,  369 
Code  Penal  of  India,  184 
Code  of  Lov< 

Code  Napoleon,    73m    84n,    368,  369 
Codes,  two,  of  Morals.  40,  74,  109,  313, 

375.  466.  481.  496,  521,  544. 
Commercial  Advertiser,    The   Pitts* 

burgh,  104 
Commercial,  The    Cincinnati  450 
Common  Law  Corrupted    by   Canon 

law,  119 
Commandments.  The  sgn,  499 
Common  Law,  84,  135 
Common  Mother.  13 
Common,  Boston  The,  287 
Comforter,  The, 259 
Community  of  women   proposed   117 
Conct.  I  -ts'  known  as  "The 

Honored    Ones,"   "The  Hallowed 

Ones."  87,  374 
Convent  of  Penitents,  108 
Conventicles.      Presbyterian,      their 

evil  reputation,  446 
Conversation  with  women  forbidden, 

62 
Corpuscles,  The,  Pacinian,  235 
Councils,  Church,  56,  57,  66,   68,    71, 

72,  75,  76,  77,  83,  89, 114,  125,  218,221, 

222,  471 
Council    Houses  of  the  Six  Nations, 

18 
Council  of  Matrons  to  whom  all   dis- 
puted questions  were  referred,  17 
Court  of  Arches.  127 
Courier,  The  Syracuse,  503 
Cuissage,  droit  de.  158,  173,  198 


Coverture,  328,  329,  386 
Cowyll,  Tho  365 

Dancing  Mania  cured  by  women  doc- 
tors    through      Simut'a    Similibus 
Curantur,  244 
Danes,   Danish,     Denmark,   21,   349, 

356,  364 
Darkest  Africa,  12,  389 
Darkest  England,  387.  389 
Darkest  New  York,  459 
Dark  Continent,  the  children's  para- 
dise.    455 
"Daughter  of  the  Deity,    33 
Daughters,  sale  of,  301,  307,  309 
Davenport's  Rules  for  his  wife,  325 
Declaration     of    Montreal     Women 

against  the  Confessional,  99 
Decretals,  51  126, 131 
Delphian  Shrine,  The  36 
Detention   Houses  of  108 
"Devil  Bride.  The"  258 
Diaz,   President,    his   brave    course, 

105,  106 
Digest  of  Hindoo    Law,   Colebrook's 

25 
Disease  of  the  Cloisters,  59,  74 
Doctor's,  Women  discover  Anaesthet- 
ics, 241 
Dodge's  Judge,  grounds  of  decision 
in    the    'Lucy  Walker  Case,"  i.  e. 
Seney  trial,  322,  323.  324 
Domstroi,  The,  381 
Dowers,  358m  359,  360,   361,   362,   363,, 

365 
Ducking     Stool,   282,   326,    334.    335 

336,  338 
Eastre.  Eostre,  239 
Egypt,  Egyptians,  16,   30,   34.   35.   36, 

37.  42,  65 
England,  21.  180,  519 
Endowment  House,  214,  414,  420 
Elementals,  The  51,  233,  235,  251 
Eton,  its  depravity,  196 
Evarts,  Hon.  Wm.,  on  woman  under 

the  law,  39 
Evangelist,  The  N.Y.  476 
Eve,  49,  51,  52,  89,  38on,    402,    433.522, 

525 
''Fathers"  The  Christian,  49,    74,   96, 

118,  520,  524 
Father  takes  name  of  child,  14 
Father-rule,  44 
Famines  result  from   persecution  of 

women,  288 
Feudalism,  174 
Feudal  Lords,  their  claims,  153,  154, 

156,  157,  160.  185,  189 
Feudal  Period,  The,  155  170  370 
Finns,    Finland   before  introduction 

of  Christianity,  41 
Finland  in  1892,  316 
Fontevrault  Order  of,   Woman    the 
General  of  the  Order,  r^-ver  of  its 
Abbesses,     67;     its    moiiKS    under 
the  contro-  cf  the  nuns,  68 
Forum,  recent  discoveries  in,  39 


INDEX 


549 


Fou  Fou,  i.  eM  Father-Mother  God,  50 
France,   woman's  condition    in,  154, 

168,  367,  371.458 
Frenchmen,  cause  of  their  decreas- 
ing size,  443,  444 
Freidrich,    William  I. his  concession 
to   the  lecherous  demands   of  the 
Gavelkind,  349,  350  State  160 
Georgia     River,      its      natives  pro- 
tect women,  309 
"Ghosts,"  Ibsen's,  377 
"Giftas,"    to      marry;     Strindberg's, 

377 
Gifts  of  Intention,  remarkable,  27 
Girl's  birth,  an   infliction,   59,370 
Girl,  a  piece  of  property,  307,  309 
Girls    rule,     Gyniakokraty,    20,   309, 

311 
Glanville,  r39,  360 
Globe,  The  Boston,  461 

'Go  Back,"   Wala's  command  to 
the  Roman  Emperor  Druses,  41 
Goddesses  superior  to  Gods,  13 
•'Gods  Hand,"  God's  Star,"  33 
Good  Hope,  Cape  Colony,  legalized 

vice  there,  181 
Governor  of  British  China  on  legal- 
ized vice  there    181 
"Government    Women,"      "Queen's 

Women,''  179 
Government  of    the    United   States 
borrowed     from    that    of  the   Six 
Nations,  19 
"Gowan,  The"  365 
•'Gragas,  The"  earliest  Iceland  law, 

223 
Greek  Church  baptizes  its  converts 

nude,  215 
"Hallowed    Ones,  The,"  "Honored 

Ones, The, "87,  374 
Hatasu.  the  light  of  the  XVIII  Egyp- 
tian dynasty,  33,  34 
Hatred  of  Old  Women  among  Chris- 
tian nations,  270,  442 
"Hearth  Penny"  of  St.  Peter,  113 
Hea    alone    knows    the    "Supreme 

Name,"  233 
Heads  of  the  Church,  their  vice,  191 
Heke,  a  witch,  wise   woman,  female 

deity,  238,  239 
Herald,  the  Chicago,  208,  209 
Herald,  the  Boston,  5i7n,  487n 
Herald,  the  New  York,  105 
Herald,  the  Rochester,  407 
Herald,  the  Syracuse   Sunday.   5ion, 

51m 
Hexen  Sabbat,  i.  e.  Walpurgis  Night 

238,  239 
Hindoo  Maxims   regarding    women, 

26,  28,  30 
Holiness,    superior    of    the    unmar- 
ried, 70 
Holiness,  superior  of  male  animals, 

59 
Holy  women,  42 


Homer    stole    the    Illiad     and    the 

Odyssey,  35 
Hopkinson    Association  of   Congre- 
gational Divines,  476 
Houses  of  Detention  for  women,   108 
H.  R.  H.,  164 

Husband     cannot  steal    from   wife, 
313;  orders  wife's  religion,  319;  has 
a   property  interest    in   wife,    322; 
right  to  direct  religious    education 
of  children,   320;   right    to     name 
child,  319;  will  of,  law,  330;  not  re- 
lated to  wife's  family,  490 
HUSBAND  and  Wife,  491. 
Hutchinson,  Mistress  Ann,  tried  for 
sedition  and   heresy     in  teaching 
men,  286,  287,  289 
Impurity  of  soul  and   body   through- 
out Christendom,  74 
Incubi,  The,  Incubus,  250 
Incontinence,    of  celibate      priests, 

72  to  no 
Independent,  the  N.  Y.  504 
Inquisition,  60,  81,  90,  95,  97,  134 
Inquisitors,   Traveling.  227 
Inter  Ocean,  The  Chicago,  333,  41211, 

464 
Ireland,  its  modern  laws,  164 
Irish  women,  ancient  forms  of  mar- 
riage, 363,  364,  519 
Isis,  Ish-Ish,  Ishtar,  Izdobar,  i3n,  30, 

3i.  32,  37.  39 
Ivan,  the  Terrible,  191,  281 
Jauioz,  the  Baron  of  168 
Jehovah,   a  double-sexed  word,    44, 

45 
Jewish  contempt  of  the  feminine,59n 
Johnson,  Sir  Wm., Power  of  Squaws, 
18;  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  on  Milton, 
402 
Journal,  the  Syracuse,  246 
Jurus,  The  129 
Jus  Primae  Noctis,  171,  178 
Keeper  of  the  Wampum,  his   Matri- 
archal descent,  18 
Keshub  Chunder  Sen,  declares  Eng- 
lish laws  degrade  women,  24 
Lachis  of  Athens,  her  ancient  laws, 

2g6n 
Lady    of  the  House,    the  Beginning 

and  the  End,  31 
Lange,  on  disappearance  of  ancient 
civilization  in  early  days  of  Chris- 
tian era,  64 
Leader,  The  Topeka.  210 
Legalized  vice  in  Christendom,  185' 

186,  187,  188,  189,  190,214 
Liberatad,  The,  of  Chili,  395 
Lords    Spiritual,    their  claims,     157, 

i74n 
"Lost  Name,  The,"  -The  LostWord" 
69.  253 

Magic  "White"  and  "Black"  236 
Magnetic  condition,  Four  degrees  of 
337 


INDEX 


n  Rents,  Maiden  Redemp- 
tion, 173,  177 

Malabar,  under  the  Matriarchate  in 
XV.  Century,  20,  21,  22. 

Man,  King  of  the  House  in  England, 

369 

Man,  his  "curse"  432,  433,  435,  438, 
431,  44^4,  446,  452.  456.  461,  534;  his 
injustice  to  women  workers,  439, 
440,  443;  his  ownership  of  woman, 
323;  ruled  by  his  emotions,   538 

Marco  Polo,  discovers  Matriarchal 
custo 

Marchetta,  Marquette,  153,  154,  156, 
173,  178,  214.  301,  309,  348 

Margaret,  St.  173 

Man :  inent,  222 

M.miage.  complex,  424 

Marriage  Customs  of  England,  329 

Mauiage  of  Equal  Dignity,  363 

Marriage  in  Ancient  Rome,  295 

Marriage  in  Russia,  382 

Martiagium  15 

Martia  "The  Just"  129,  130 

Marozia,  her  power  over  the  Papal 
Throne,  66 

Maskim,  to  stop  their  ravages,  233 

"Masterless  Women,"  138.  262,  355, 
362 

Matilda,  Countess,  her  power  over 
popedom,  66n 

Matriarchate.  The,  form  of  United 
States  government  due  to,  19 

Matriarchate.The  13,  14,  17,  20,21,  23, 
43,  136,  148,  296 

Matriarchal,  15.  16.  20,  31,  32 

Mazzini.    his  prophecy,  515 

Medicine  for  forgeifulness,37 

Medicine,  its  origin,  31 

Melancthon,  39^.  4»9 

Memorial  to  President  Cleveland  by 
the  National  Woman  Suffrage  As- 
sociation, 343.  Memorial,  49  Vic  356 

Memorial  History  of  the  American 
Episcopal  Church,  541 

Merchetum  Sanguinis,  171 
morphosis,    219 

Mexico,  the  church  in.  105,  106 

Minister,  a  Presbyterian  fands  apolo- 
gies in  the  Bible  for  illicit  conduct 
467 

Milton  favors  polygamy;  his  domes- 
tic tyranny,  401.  402 

Mitakshara,  the  Compiler  of, 28 

Morganatic  marriage,  374,    375 

Monogamy  woman's  doctrine,424 

Moses,  16,  32 

Mother-rule,  13.  19.  26 

Moors  of  Spain,  65;  Mohammedan 
learning  keeps  one  corner  of 
Europe  bright,  6s 

Most  pronounced  doctrine  of  the 
Church,  65 

Mormons,  179.  212.  214 

Mormon,    First  Presidency  of,    41  x; 


polygamists  become  gods  at  death, 
416;  theocracy,  418;  woman's  sal- 
vation depends  orr  polygamy,  420; 
trained  under  orthodox  Christian- 
ity, 420;  Priesthood,  425;  working 
for  a  temporal  kingdom;  President 
Elliott  of  Harvard  favorably  com- 
pares Iformana  and  Puritans,  407 

Mormonism,  Bishop  Lund  defends, 
421;  Rev.  P.  C.  Lyford  on,  423: 
claims  of  President  John  Taylor, 
429;  Helen  H.  Jackson  on,  416 

Mortality  among  infants  and  chil- 
dren, 444,  446,  452 

Mott.  Lncretia,  469.  471,  475,  534 

Mund.  The  Mundium,  214,  301,  349 

Mysterious  interchange  of  germs  199 

Nairs,  The,  under  Matriarchal  rule, 
21 

"Name,  The  Lost,'*  79.  253 

Name,  the  supreme,  which  Hea  alone 
knows,  233 

Nation,  The  N.  Y.,  462 

National  Reform  Association,  427, 
428,512.  515 

National    Reformer,   (London)  44,on, 

National  Woman  SuffrageMemorial, 
343 

Neferhotep.  Princess,  a  priestess,  33 

Neith  the  Victorious,  mother  of  gods 

and  men.  16,  33 

Nekrasof,  a  Russian  poet,  384,    385 

New  Delta,  (N.  O.)  i88n 

News, Daily,  The  (London)    I37n,i62n 

Nihilism,  its  cause.  191,  385 

Non-consent  not  impair  validity  of 
marriage.  306 

Notable  consequences  follow  the  es- 
tablishment of  Celibacy  as  a  dogma 
of  the  church.  81 

Odelstling.  The,  378n 

Olga,  Czarina. her  policy  of  800  years 
since,  controls  Europe  to-day,  379 

Old  women,  hatred   of  270,   442 

"Only  by  sinning  can  sin  be  quelled" 
92n,  467 

Open  Court,  The,  i3n 

Opposite  teachings  on  marriage  by 
the  church.  73 

Oracles,  ancient,  from  lips  of  a 
Priestess,  36 

Original  Sin,  woman  the  original  sin- 
ner, 150.  151  .  _     „ 

Otto.  Cardinal,  77;  Ottoborn,  Cardi- 
nal Legate,  Institutions  of,  77,  78, 
82 

Outlawry,   Scandinavian,  42,   367 

Owens,  Caroline,  her  experience  in 
polygamy,  414 

Ownership  of  property;  its  remark- 
able effects.  364 

Oxford  Library,  33,   55     . 

Pacinian  Corpuscles,  The,  235,236 

Paraclete   Convent  of  the,  68,  60 

Palladium,The,in  woman's  charge,38 


INDEX 


551 


Pall  Mall  Gazette,   164,  i88n,  192,  195 
Panim    Ivan,    on     Russian      wives, 
382-3 

Parthenon.the  Temple  of  the  Virgins 
38 

Paramount  Council  of  the  Zunis,   19 

Path.  The(N.  Y.)355 

Patarichate,  The,  20,  43,  44,  83,  123, 
429,  528 

Paul, St.,  the  first  Jesuit,  37,  54;  a  mar 
ried  man,  54,  55;  as  a  persecutor, 
salutes  women  with  a  "holy  kiss," 
55;  St.  Paul,  53,  57,  58,  78,  79  80,    94 

Pastoral  Letter  of  General  Associa- 
tion Congregationalists  of  Massa- 
chusetts, 471,  472 

Pastoral  Lenten  of  Rt.  Rev.Cleveland 
A.  Coxe,  487 

Peculiars,  Woman's  Three,  365 

Penetralia,  The,  its  secrets  still  un- 
known, 39 

Pentegram,  The,  key  of  the  Two 
Worlds.  232,  234 

Personal  Rights  Journal  (Eng)  392 

Pestilence  caused  by  Christian  wars 
and  persecutions,  288 

Peter  the  Great,  head  of  the  Greek 
church;  his  liaisons,  56 

Petit  treason  the  crime  of,3i4,  317,  353 

Petrouville,  The  Abbess.  67 

Pharaoh,  16,  33,  34 

Phtha,  Temple  of  35 

"Pilgrim  Fathers,  The"  236,  283 

Polygamy,  Christian,  328;  first  synod 
of  the  Reformation  to  sustain,  328; 
•  Dialogues  in  favor  of"  403;  Ameri- 
can Board  of  Foreign  Missions 
sustains,  404;  Missionary  confer- 
ence in  Calcutta  sustains,  405;  en- 
dorsed as  not  contrary  to  the  Bible 
406;  of  Charlemagne,  398-Valentin. 
ian  laws  favoring,  328;  Luther 
sustains  from  the  Bible,  399; 
Melancthon,  Bucer  and  other  early 
"Reformers"  sustain,  399;  Milton 
sustains,  400,  401;  LordSeldon  sus- 
tains, 399;Bishop  Burnet  sustains; 
399;  Rev  John  Lyser  sustains;  Rev. 
Dr.  Madden  sustains,  403;  Wm. 
Ellery  Channing  saw  no  prohibition 
in  the  New  Testament,  402;  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  quotes  Milton,  403; 
"God  endorses  "Bible  favors"405; 
Rev.  David  O  Allen  of  American 
Board  on,  406;  Dora  Young  on,  412; 
Caroline  Owen's  experience,  414, 
415,416;  Helen  H.  Jackson  on,  417: 
its  silent  woes,  413;  women  slaves 
under.  Mormons  claim  counte- 
nanced by  the  New  Testament,  423; 
claim  Christ  as  sustaining,  422 

Pope  Anastatius  III.,  66;  Benedict 
X,  251;  Boniface  IX..  61;  Gregory 
XV.,  96;  Gregory  XVI.,  103;  Hon- 
orius,  73;   Innocent    III.;  John  X., 


66;TohnXL,  66;    John    XIII.,   97n; 
Leo  IX.,  72;  Leo   XIII.,    148;     Paul 
IV.,   95;   Pelagius  II.,    71,  80;   Pius 
IX.;  66,  103,  148,     150;   Sergius  III., 
66;  Sixtus  III.,  8sn;  Sixtus  IV.,  157; 
Sixtus    V.,    79;    Sylvester   II.,   251; 
Pope  of  the  Hebrews,  148. 
"Poet,  The  of  Chivalry,"  117 
Potent  Mother  Goddess,  31 
Port  Royal  des  Champs,  67 
President  Cleveland  sends  a    gift  to 

Pope  Leo  XIII.,  148 
President    Cleveland,  Memorial    to, 

343.  345 
Press,  The  (Philadelphia)  452 
Prices  paid  for  torturing  criminals, 

266. 267    268 
"Principal  Women  of  the    Six    Na- 
tions" 18 
Property  the  test  condition  of  a   na- 
tion, 143,  144 
ProtectiveChicago  Agency  for  women 

and  children,  332 
Puritans  The,  Puritan  Fathers,  58, 

245,  282 
"Queen's  Women"  179.  187 
Record,  The  (Boston)  404 
Republican,  The  Washington,  48m 
Redemption  of  Blood,  171 
Reformation;   its  lules    for  women, 

146 
Refuge,  no  for  woman,  288 
"Reichbote  Der"  Berlin,  444 
Rameses  II.;  Rameses,  III.,  37 
Recorder,  the  Methodist,  504 
Republican,  the  St.  Louis,  338n 
Republican,  the  Washington,  48m 
Rev.    Nehemiah    Adams,    author  of 
Pastoral  Letter,  472;  Rev.  Dr.  Bal- 
lantine.See  Trial,  480;  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  403  Edw.  Beecher,  Father 
Bodfisch,  512, Dr.    Buckley,  502,  508; 
Thos.  Bowman,  Rt.  Rev.  Cleveland 
A.    Coxe,    6in,   481;   Robert   Laird 
Collyer,      Wm.    Ellery    Channing, 
Athenase    Coquerel.    Dr.   Craven, 
6in,  479,    480,    514;    Crummel  Alex- 
ander, 496;  Cuyler  Theodore  L., 476; 
Davidson    (Evangelist)    201;     Day, 

tR.  507;  Denhurst.  Mr.,  482, 
ilke,  S.  W  .  500-  Dix,  Dr.  Lenten 
Sermons  against  women,  482,  483, 
484,  485.  518,  519:  Douglas,  David, 
•'Wife,  why  dost  thou  weep?"  467; 
Gray  (Chaplain)  469;  Dr.  Gould- 
bourne,  519;  Gray,  Geo.  Zabriskie, 
D.  D.  489;  Hammond,  Dr.,  502; 
Healy,  Bishop,  517;  Huntington, 
Rt.,  49m;  Hurlburt,  E.  B.,  501; 
Kingsley,  Charles  (Canon)  150;  Lit- 
tle, Dr.  Charles,  521;  Little-Knox, 
482;  Liddon  (Canon)  519;  Lyser, 
John,  Littlejonn,  Dr.,  "Triennial 
Charge"  519;  Merrell  (Bishop) 
506;  Moody,  (Evangelist)  537;  Nor- 


55fl 


INDEX 


wlch.Dean  of;  5711;  Necley.  F.  B., 
510;  Patten,  D.  D.,  W  W.,  481; 
Rothmeilcr,  Jacob,  507;  Sr» 
Isaac,  his  trial,  6in,  178;  479;  Sher- 
man A.,  483;  Smith,  Few,  480; 
Strong,  Dr.,  President  Baptist 
Theological  Sem.;  470  Tallmage, 
T.  De  Witt,  198,  200,  493;  Tinsey, 
Thomas,  509;  Turnstall.  W.  V..  499; 
506.  419;  Upham,  Charles  W.; 
Willis.  Samuel  Joseph,  offers 
£100  reward  for  his  wife's  re- 
turn to  him.  Wiley,  John,  Presi- 
dent Drew  University,  507;  Wilsey 
A.  Williamson,  David,  476;  Wilson, 
Mr.,  480 

Review,  the  Louisiana,  i88n 

Rights  divided,  118 

Ritualistic  Episcopal  church,  in, 
112 

Rome,  Romans,  Roman  Empire,  31, 
37,  38,  60,  65.  83.  114.  115.  139,  376. 

Russian   Bride's  Lament,  The,  383 

Sab,  Saba.  Sabasius,  239 

Sabbat.  22.  23.  238.  239,  258 

Sabbath,    23  59;    to  go  to,  217  223  239 

259 

Sacred  songs  of  Isis,  32;  Sistrum.Thc 
Sacred  33;  Sacred  Scribes,  34 

Sacrilegious  child,  137,  150,   160.  499 

Sacraments,  The  Seven.  216 

Sacrifice  of  animal  passions,  44 

Sacrifice  of  milk,  33 

Sadagora,  ''Pope  of  the  Hebrews" 
148 

Sagas  of  Iceland,  371 

Sages,  240 

og,  The,  378 

Sainio.  Mrs.,  her  crime  of  petit  trea- 
son; hand  cut  off;  decapitated.body 
burnt,  September  1892 

Sala,  a  house,  347;  Salic  law  a 
penal  code,  347,  488 

Samokversof  378 

Sarand,  The  265 

Scandinavians,  42.  348,  367,  371 

Scarlet  Letter  of  Shame,  336 

Sclavs,    20 

Scold's  Bridle,  The.  326,  334 

Scold's,  law  for  punishment  of,  337 

Seeress  of  Prevorst,  237,  267n 

See  Trial,  478,  479 

Segent  Sarcedos.    The  Wise,  39 

Seigneural  tenure  in  Canada,   175 

Seldon,  Lord,  "The  Light  of  Eng- 
land" 126,  399 

Self-development  the  first  duty  of 
life,  53: 

Sermons  on  women,  478 

Service  of  Love,  ii7n 

Sentinel,  Indianapolis,  48711 

Seven  Evidences  of  possession,  235 

Shadee.Agamini  26,  27 

Shrine,  Delphian,  the  Pythia  its 
priestess.  36 


Sibylt.  Sibyline  books,  35,  36,  42 
Sin  killed  by  sin.  93,  94    467 
Sin-offering  demanded  from   mother, 

59 

not  related  to  husband 

488,  490 
Slavs,   Slavonians,   379,  380,  382,    384 
Sod,  4511 

Soma,  a  body,  representing  man,  23 
Songs,  Witch,  220 
Song,   Russian  Bride's  Lamentation, 

Souls,  women  no;  no  reason,  56,  57 
Spencer,  Herbert.  58,  341,  345.  371 

The,   269 
Spirit,  the  Holy  is  feminine,  46,  47 
Spiritual  Courts,  115 

Syracuse,  36,  I33n 
1  <1.  The  Woman's,  204n 
te  of  Uniformity    in  religious 
opinions,  262 

I  woman's  property,  28 
Strindberg  '■  prohibited, 

377;     escapes      imprisonment     by 
flight,  377;  < 


379 


,  377;  ovation  upon  his  return, 


Stool,  the  of  Penitence  for  women, 33? 

St  Thomas  Aquinas  on  celibacy,  77 

St.  Paphinutius,  the  martyr   Bishop 
of  Thebes,  on    celibacy,     ;; 
Dunstan,  famed  for  his  hatred  of 
women,  55;St  Theresa  founded  the 
Barefoot  Carmelites,  3m 

Strothing,  The  378 

A  of  To-day,  166 

Succubi,  Succubus,  250 

le,  women  driven  to,  228 

Sultan  of  Egypt  on  Christianity,305 

Summary  of  Solicitations.  97 

Sun,  The  New  York,  107,  164,  203n, 
396 

Supreme  Name  The,  which  Hea 
alone  knows,  233 

Sweinn  Folkbeard  institutes  Dowers 

Swrya,  the  Sun  the  source  of  life; 
woman  represented  by  among  the 
ancient  Aryans,  23 

Synod,  American  the  first  to  try  a 
woman  for  heresy,  286;  of  Elvira, 
114;  Four,  4^n,  of  New  Jersey,  to 
try  Rev.  Isaac  See  for  admitting 
women  to  his  pulpit,  179,  481;  of 
Paris,  115;  first  of  Reformation  to 
sustain  polygamy,  398;  of  Win- 
chester, 55 

Syros,  i.  e.,  God,  36 

Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  18,  86n,  198,  201,    202 

Talmud,  the,  on  cleansings  for 
women,  son 

Terre  Haute,  (Ind.)  Mail,  326 

Telegraph,  (London)  319 

Tetzel  the  great  seller  of  indulgences; 
his  remark,  62 

Thotmes  III.,  preceded  by  Hatasu, 
in  worship,  34 


INDEX 


553 


ThreePersons  in  Heaven  balanced  by 
Three  Persons  in  Hell,  249 

Times,  The  London,  i37n 

Times,  The  Philadelphia   492 

Times,  The  Bismark,  34on 

Toledo  Bee,  the  322 

Traffic  in  young  girls,  195,  196,  197, 
207 

Transcript,  The  Boston,  413 

Tribune,  The  New  York,  i37n,  i63n, 
536 

Tribune,  The  Woman's,  i96n,  535 

Triple  Crown  worn  by  Egyptian 
Queens,  336 

Truth,  London,  518 

Twelve  Tables,  law  of,  41,  2,  25,  227 

Uncleanliness  attributed  to  women, 
60 

Union  Labor  Journal,  204n 

Uniate  Greek  Church,  103,  104 

Usus,  225,  226,  227,  228,  229,  359 

Vasist  ha,  25 

VSyu,  the  swiftest  of  the  gods,  23 

Veda,  Vidya,  24,  25,  29,  238 

Vestal  Virgins,  the,  38,  39,  223 

Venice  defies  the  Inquisition,  255 

Victoria,  "Mother  of  Camps"  348 

Victoria,  Queen,  148 

Victims  of  Priests,  94 

Vidma,  238 

Virgins,  Temple  of  the,  40 

Vjrdma,   238 

Vladimir,  Czar  the,  382 

Vritra,  a  demon,  23 

Walker's  American  Law,  351 

"Walker,  Lucy  Case"  the  celebrated 
321,  324 

Wales,  Welch,  519 

Walnut  tree  of  Benevento,     255n 

Walpurgis  Night,  238,  259 

West  End,  its  vices,  196 

Westminster  Review,  331 

White  Cross  Society,  312,  213 

Widow,  24,  362n,  368 

Wife,  "An  unhallowed  thing",  87n; 
beating,  373,  382;  dragged  by  rope 
about  neck,  291;  driven  in  harness 
383;  holds  power,  391,  393;  loses 
relationship  to  own  family,  496; 
not  name  child,  319;  not  a  person 
but  a  field;  no  right  in  law,  320;  no 
right  to  teach  children  what  hus- 
band does  not  believe,  320;  no 
right  as  against  husband;  no  free- 
hold in  dower,  360;  payment  for; 
religion  ordered  by  husband,  319; 
to  rear  children  as  husband's  pro- 
perty, 320.  372;  sold  as  a  cow,  304; 
turning  out  of  doors  not  cruelty, 389; 

Will.  The,  234 

Wir-Wiasen,  238 

Wives:  advertising,  141,  390,  392; 
beating;  burning  alive,  311,  3i4»3i5» 
316;  burying  alive,  382;  buying,  302, 
304;  can  steal  from  husbands,    316, 


317;  decapitating  wives,  3i6;drown- 
mg  wives,  304;  flogging,  314;  hus- 
bands cannot  steal  from.  313;  hus- 
bands property;  not  related  to  hus- 
band, 315;  property  willed  to  mis- 
tress by  husband,  314;  petit  treason 
of,  314,  315,  316,  317;  sale  of  305  335; 
sold  as  slaves  to  the  church,  75, 
78;  services  due  to  husband,  317; 
strangling  304-  driven  to  suicide,  82 

Witch;bridle,  269,  234;  conventicles, 
dances,  doctors,  240,  242,  243,  dis- 
cover anaesthetics,  241,  242;  prin- 
ciples of  Homeopathy,  241,  244; 
Finders,  227;  Hammer,  224; 
House, 283;  Inquisitors, 227;marriage 
with  devils,  249;  not  look  person  in 
the  face,  232;Persecutors,  Prickers, 
227,  248;  punishment  of,  249;  the 
profoundest  thinker,  243;  torture, 
266,  267;  trials,  276,  278,  280;  rules 
searching  for  marks,  247:  songs, 
220;  Sabbat,  258;  Scotch  burned; 
her  son's  inhumanity;  reputed  flog- 
ged by  son,  293;  a  woman  of  super- 
ior knowledge,  236 

Witchesjburnt,  260,  271,  272;  property 
forfeited,  material  used  in  burning 
266;directions  for  discovery  of  281; 
Witches,  For,  read  "Women,"  291 

Witchcraft,  children  of  most  tender 
years  not  escape,  232,  284;  to  give 
up  is  to  "give  up  the  Bible,"  261; 
indictment,  form  of,  290;  most  dis- 
tinguishing features  of  254;  most 
striking  points,  260;  Three  Notable 
things  in  regard  to,  252;in  Mexico, 
293;  New  Jersey,  292;  New  York, 
Indiana,  293;  Wisconsin,  292 

Woman  clothed  with  the  Sun,  45n; 
counted  among  criminals,  451;  de- 
graded to  the  level  of  beasts,  447, 
448;  government  interference  in 
her  work,  443;  her  "curse"  432,  505; 
imprisoned  for  religious  opinions 
in  United  States,  207;  in  under- 
ground labors,  and  children,  436, 
438;  less  pay  than  man  for  same 
work,  442,  448,  452;  married,  the 
only  class  of  slaves  left,  352;  naked 
baptized:  rubbed  in  oil  215;  pri- 
mal priest  on  earth;  supreme  as 
goddess,  in  heaven,  13;  performs 
the  most  repulsive  labors;  pit  of 
England,  43,  443;  punished  for 
man's  crimes,  343;  question  in 
Europe,  369;  severing  the  last  link 
534;  sinfulness  of,  381;  small  value' 
of  her  life,  381;  speech  with  forbid- 
den, 62;  supreme  wickedness  of, 786 
subordinate  to  men  in  office,  400; 
testimony  not  received,  143,  too 
impure  to  enter  church,  51.  114; 
milk,  to  kill  a  fowl,  381;  'The  Wise, 
240,    242;    whipped  half   nude  at 


554 


INDEX 


cart's  tail,  25S;  with    rawhide.  205; 
with  new-born  babe  at   breast.   287 
Protective  Agency. 
432:    Woman  I   Christian  Temper- 
ance Union,  515.  Woman's  Journal 
\l%    Woman's   Na- 
1   Liberal  League,  475n;  Wom- 
an's and      Protective 
sin's  Wor'd,  370 
Woman's  work   in   Belgium  450;   in 
England,    439;     France,     446;     Ger- 
many, 448,  449;  Ireland,   441;    Indi- 
ans among  1  5;   Montene- 
gro, 451;  Rome,  ancient,   464;   Rus- 
ISi;  Samoa,  309;    Sweden,   462; 
Switzerland,    450;    United    S 
the,  442,  445.  453,  454.  45&.  459-   461; 
Venice,  452 
Women,  abduction  of,  366;  and   girls 
reported  missing, 208,  334;  babbling 
punishment  of,  337,  baptized  naked 
214,  218;  burned  alive  for  petit  trea- 
son, 353;  as  witches,   buried  alive, 
353;  Bible,  not   to   read,    355;  the 


earliest  doctors,  240,  434;  declared 
witches,  241;  drowned  or  burnt  be- 
cause of  their  knowledge,  243;  dis- 
covered anaesthetics,  241,  242;  de- 
putations of  naked,  160;  driven  to 
suicide,  228;  ducking, 336;chastised 
naked  for  their  sins, 216;  churching, 
59,  60.  $87,  505:  classed  among 
brutes  without  soul  or  reason,  56; 
harnessed  with  asses,  cows,  dogs, 
448,  449,  450:  hunted  by  blood- 
hounds 203,  20411,  205,  206;  hung  on 
BostonCommon  for  religious  opi  n- 
ions,  289;  impure,  too  to  take  the 
Sacrament, 51, ii4;in  disgrace  under 
the  Commonwealth,  i47n;legislated 
for  as  slaves,  350;  tongue  nailed  to 
tree  for  political  opinion,  308; 
"masterless,"   262,  355,  367 

Women's  English  Suffrage  Journal, 
320,  321,  339,  356 

Zeus,  46 

Znat,  Znahara,  238 

Zuni,  12,  19* 


LOFLAND  &  RUSSELL 


